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-THE fATAl HOROSCOPE. 

THE 



PROF. GRIMMER'S 

STARTLING- PREDICTION, WITH COMMENTS BY OTHER 
EMINENT SCIENTISTS. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
PRINTED BY THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING CO., 

1881. 




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oXXo 



COLOR WORK A SPECIALTY. 



THE 



Coming Catastrophe, 

BEING A PREDICTION BY 

PROF. C. A. GRIMMER, 

(ASTROLOGER,) 



OF THE TERRIBLE MISFORTUNES, WOES AND MISERIES THREAT- 
ENED TO MANKIND BY THE MALIFIC CONJUNC- 
TIONS NOW RULING THE HEAVENS; 



o^iisrioisrs ra,o:vc 

Doctor Cummings, Magus Bickerstaff, Sidney Brooks 
and Others. 



CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: 

PUBLISHED BY THE TKIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

1831. 



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COPYRIGHT, 1881, 

IB^T 3D. GILBERT DEXTER, 

CAMBRIDGE. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



PREFACE. 



In the issue of The Cambridge Tribune, under date Sept. 
24, 1880, there appeared an article from the pen of Professor 
Grimmer, Astrologist, reciting the causes and effects of certain 
celestial conditions. The production took the form of a predic- 
tion touching the catastrophes which are threatened or indicat- 
ed by Astrological calculations, based on the aspect of the 
Heavens at this time. 

The article was extensively read, copied and commented on ; 
and the demand for copies of The Tribune containing it con- 
tinuing after the entire edition of that date was exhausted, it 
was reprinted in the issue of Nov. 5, 1880, of which an extra 
large number were printed. As this second publication has 
proved insufficient to meet the demand provoked by the extra- 
ordinary nature of the predictions and the singular reasons 
urged by the Astrologer for its general adoption as an article of 
faith, the publishers have determined to put it forth in book 
form. 

Following its second appearance in The Cambridge Tribune 
there was received a communication, signed ''Sidney Brooks," 
in which doubt was thrown upon the veracity of the prediction, 



4 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

the publication of which provoked comment and reply fromi 
Mr. Magus Bickerstaff. A second letter came from Mr. 
Brooks, and a rejoinder from Mr. Bickerstaff. These epistles, 
together with a mass of other communications and comments,, 
are hereto appended. 

In order to give completeness to the whole, the publishers- 
engaged Mr. Magus Bickerstaff to write an article on Astrol- 
ogy? which here serves as an introduction to Professor Grim- 
mer's prediction. 

Mr. Bickerstaff is not a myth. He is a gentleman pro- 
foundly versed in Astrology, and a professional Astrologist. It 
may seem singular that he declines expressing an opinion on 
the accuracy of Professor Grimmer' s prophetic utterances ; but, 
as he has explained to the publishers, he has no time nor in- 
clination to verify the Professor's calculations. J\Jr. Bicker- 
staff does not cast general or personal Horoscopes, being con- 
stantly and profitably employed in the political line of Astro- 
logical calculations. He furnishes aspiring politicians and 
would-be candidates with reliable indications of their success 
or failure in their ambitious undertakings ; and has saved many 
an office-seeker, in Boston and Cambridge, many a dollar, by 
giving them assurances of the impossibility of the consumma- 
tion of their candidacies. For this his charges are reasonable, 
beirfg but 10 per cent, of the estimated cost of a canvass and 
contest. 

Naturally, he does not advertise extensively, and works 
quietly along ; the fact that his business hardly admits of refer- 
ence to patrons, being a great incentive to privacy. 

The publishers have it from Mr. BickerstafFs own lips that 
his warnings were potent enough to stop no less than 605 citi- 
zens of Cambridge from agitating their claims. to municipal 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 5 

office, and to prevent them rushing into all sorts of complica- 
tions and expenses to secure nominations at the recent city 
election. And each one of the 605 is satisfied with the fee paid 
the Astrologer ; rightly arguing, that, it being on the roll for 
the present incumbents to succeed, any expenditure in opposi- 
tion would necessarily have been waste. 

The fact of Professor Grimmer's absence renders it impossi- 
ble for the publishers to present anything further from his pen ; 
.and this is the more to be regretted because we, as well as the 
readers of the book, should have been pleased to have read the 
Professor's vindication and enlargement of his prediction. 

Cambridge Tribune Office, Jan., 1881. 



PRINTED AT 

THE TRIBUNE BOOK AND JOB OFFICE, 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Horoscopse depictando ab initio duce in rectibus tollati. — [Messalah, "Ex- 
plicare." 



It seems to me there is nothing more certain, in this icono- 
clastic and incredulous age, than that the world has taken its 
Astrologic Cue from the most pretentious literary humbug of 
all the ages — Mr. Thomas Carlyle (Sartor Besartus). The 
canny man of Dumfriesshire, who postured as English editor 
of Legendre's Astronomy, united the denseness of Scotch in- 
tellect to the airy and individual originality of the Frenchman ; 
and, projected in the composed line of these eccentric forces, 
begat that monstrosity of scientific and literary perversion, u in 
two flights," the article "Count Cagliostro" of Fraser's Mag- 
azine, A. D., 1833. 

From that date, the absolute year of the natation of the pres- 
ent dominant generation, the Sublime Mysteries of Astrology 
have been ridiculed, and the Wonderful Masters of the science 
brought into contempt. And herein, we remark, is an un- 
mistakable vindication of the truths of the very science so ar- 
raigned ; for Zahelbebis lays it down in his treatise, "Al 
edisiri Mochane Astrologi," that the ruling influences in gener- 
ative era initials are as potent as those governing the Houses in 
purely Individual Horoscopes. It is most clear, then, that a 



8 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

topical evil influence having attended the inception of this 
generation, the men and women growing up in it, and coming 
within the particular rule of the influence (as readers and con- 
veners on Astrology) will deny the truth, refuse evidence and 
withhold conviction. 

A precisely parallel time, inclination and malign influence 
was recognized in 1546 (the key year of a generation), which, 
less powerful than that in the ascendancy of 1833, was yet 
powerful enough to counteract the influence of so eminent a 
man as Tycho Brahe (born in 1546), the father of the so- 
called system of Modern Astronomy, the teacher of Kepler and 
the creator of Newton. In the ' ' Opera Omnia" Brahe most ably 
defends the judicial functions of Astrology while making dis- 
coveries in the physical, enough tohave given a proper bent to 
Kepler or Isaac Newton ; still, the malifics being prominent, 
those distinguished scholars rejected the judicial aspect and only 
pursued the mathematical and physical. 

The converse holds good for the years which begat the gen- 
erations who hung upon the wisdom of Albumazar, of Ali-ben- 
Eodoan and of Cardan. 

In the pendulous swing of the mighty stars, and the like 
oscillation of human mind, the years will come about again 
when the influence of the resistless forces of illimitable space, 
on the plastic, petty affairs and lives of men will be acknowl- 
edged. Then shall learned pundits cope in proper spirit with 
the vast problems of destiny, as issuing from direction ; and 
the stars be again read for the guidance of power-swayed 
humanity. 

The very scoffers at the records of Astrology, the very 
trembling, apprehensive, yet whistling doubters of the follow- 
ing Predictions of my friend, Professor Grimmer, are the ones 
to acknowledge that the conjunction or opposition of the other 
planets of our system have incalculable influence on terrestrial 
climate, motion, and orbital variation. Dr. Geikie in his ad- 
mirable work, "The Great Ice Age," cleverly demonstrates that 
glacial origin is immediately connected with planetary con- 
junction ; and Dr. Croll, the eminent scientist, in his masterly 
book, "Climate and Time, ,, shows how the Northern Summer 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 9 

Solstice occuring in Perihelion may pass without glacial forma- 
tion, unless the Maximum Eccentricity of the Orbit shall fall 
on the same period. Now, this Glacial Formation determines 
the whole climatic and natural history of a hemisphere, and 
the Eccentricity is determined by the attraction of the Solar 
Planets. The last Great Glacier of the Northern Hemisphere, 
under these conditions, extended, a solid mass of ice, twelve 
miles thick at the Pole, down to the 36th Parallel of North Lati- 
tude ; and moved, a mile thick, over the spot that now bears 
Boston. It swept the surface of the country down to the bed 
rock and cast it into the sea. It obliterated a world of vegeta- 
ble and animal life in nowise similar to that which has succeed- 
ed it. And this catastrophe is distinctly attributable to the 

INFLUENCE OF THE STARS ; IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN PREDICTED ; 
AND IT WILL OCCUR AGAIN. 

Understand me ! The greatest event which can happen, 
next to the absolute destruction of the planet, is a subject 
strictly within the bounds of Judicial Astrology, as is that 
very destruction itself. The one has been demonstrated ; the 
other may be. 

If, then, the tremendous concerns of Earth and Earth-Lives 
are governed and controlled, as indicated by Astrological De- 
ductions, does it not follow (as the greater contains the less) 
that the events of individual existences are governed, controlled 
and indicated by stellar influences? The scientists who dic- 
tate opinion to the shallow, superficial and superstitious Nine- 
teenth Century are formulating theories of constant planetary 
sway of Earth herself, and yet they have the temerity to deny 
the plain, ultimate results, in detail, of the very forces they 
recognize as potent in the mightier aggregate. How illogical 
and unreasonable is such a course ! 

The aspect of the Heavens determines wet and dry seasons. 
By this I mean the regions outside the Meteorologic Eange of 
World Attraction compel the meteorologic changes of even re- 
stricted localities. The aridity or humidity of a locality de- 
termines the physical features of flora and fauna, which devel- 
opments are the deus ex ma china of individual and communal 
histories ; and, being rightly interpreted, may be accurately 



10 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

forecast. This forecasting is by some denominated Prophecy ; 
by others it is called Divination ; to us it is simply the De- 
duction of Judicial Astrology. It is the most limited of the 
recognized forces ; yet it is taken as much into the account of 
Messalah's Horoscopes as the Sinister Aspect of Mars and Sat- 
urn in the First House ; and Mercury obscured, in the Fourth, 
by a Malignant Opposition of Jupiter. 

The most eminent observer, call him what you will, is either 
a conscious or unconscious Astrologer ; and the less he ac- 
knowledges the fact, the less trustworthy and the more incon- 
sistent he is. 



CHAPTER II. 



The Grand Cophta is only superhuman in so far as his acquaintance with Ar- 
canse transcends that of the vulgus populL— [Almansur. 



I began by reference to Sartor Besartus, and Joseph Bal- 
samo, Count de Cagliostro. I do not pretend to defend the title 
of Balsamo to a place among the Illuminati ; he may have 
been a Charlatan and Imposter ; he may have been a Philoso- 
pher and Astrologer. But I do challenge the obstinate and 
thick-skulled Scotchman for his treatment of Astrology, found- 
ed on his just or unjust detestation of Joseph Balsamo, a real 
or, pretended Astrologer. It is a narrow mind which cannot 
separate a professor from a system. 

One thing Balsamo did know ; a thing which seems to 
dwarf the self-puffed perception of a Thomas Carlyle ; and 
that was the fact that Mars in the ascendency in Individual 
Horoscopic Aspect always exerts a baleful influence. It is 
purely malific, and operates in aggravating progression in all 
conjunctions, and is but once at all propitious in opposition. 

The bearing of this lies in the application of modern discov- 
ery (so-called) to ancient nomenclature and induction. 

Outside this earth's orbit is that of Mars, whose place was 
indicated and whose motions were calculated by the ancient 



12 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

Chaldean Astrologers, and by them denominated Aras, of the 
same root as ki Aryan," and which became arya in the Sans- 
crit, and Ares, the Greek God of "War (son of Zeus and 
Hara) . This Hara is the Chaldaic u Aras" in feminine dis- 
guise, and meant, when generally applied, "noble," or "of 
good family ;" but when bestowed as a personal qualification 
had the courageous idea involved. As the designation of a 
superior being or god, it conveyed the idea of the incitor and 
patron of strife, of war, of rapine, pillage, suffering and death. 
Some cuing above the ordinary intelligence, some superior ac- 
quaintance with Arcanae, prompted the early naming of this 
planet with such suggestion of horror and malaspect. The 
same elevation of perception above the valgus populi perpetu- 
ated the idea in the changed appellation "Mars" — still the God 
of War, of bloodshed, misery, woe and death. 

Those were days before the Telescopes of Lord Rosse and 
Melbourne ; before the art of Martin & Eichens, and of A. 
Clark & Sons. The minds which saw reason for such sinister 
naming of a planet, saw as distinctly, without silvered reflec- 
tors and curiously wrought object-glasses, as our modern as- 
tronomers do with those modern appliances. 

They saw more. They saw terrestrial as well as celestial 
reasons for the title they bestowed. 

Richard Proctor, Asaph Hall, and other astronomers agree 
that Mars is the stormy planet of the solar system. Its sur- 
face is rudely broken into areas of water and land ; the inclina- 
tion of its equator to its orbit is twenty-eight degrees ; its polar 
glaciers are tremendous in area, and terrific in rapidity of for- 
mation and dissipation. Over it sweep storms of inconceiv- 
able extent, force and duration. Its breezes would render the 
earth uninhabitable ; its gales would level our forests with the 
ground ; its tornadoes would so overcome terrestrial gravita- 
tion as to drive the waters of the sea fairly across the world's 
widest continents, and set boulders flying like leaves before an 
autumnal hurricane. Its existence is chaos, and its rule is ele- 
mental strife. 

This is the planet which Geikie, Croll, and all other modern 
investigators declare to be the most powerful disturber of the 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 13 

earth in its orbit. And the disturbance is ultimately to utter 
distinction of world-forms and life. Leading up to the catas- 
trophe, and included in the endless variation and inclusion of 
the force, are the minor influences exerted on individual lives 
and human events which are, and must of necessity be, of the 
nature of the body generating the force. The condition, there- 
fore, of Mars being malant, the influence must be malific. 
Can any demonstration be clearer? 

Now, the ancient Astrologers, and even Joseph Balsam o, 
taught the malific influence of Mars in ascendency ; which 
teaching is scientifically and logically affirmed by the lauded 
researches of modern scientists, and the accepted doctrines of 
modern schools. This is either a coincidence or irrefutable 
proof of the truth of the value and rational worth of Judicial As- 
trology. It cannot be a coincidence ; for, if it were, the preser- 
vation of the significance of the name and assignment of precise 
governance through all the changes of tongue, of place, and ol 
observers, from Chaldea to Paris, would be more wonderfully 
Providential than any Special Providence imagined or recorded 
by mankind. It would be vain to deny that the observers, who 
so characteristically described the features of the planet in be- 
stowing upon it its various names, were led to the descriptive 
cognomens by possession of superior wisdom. And as that 
wisdom was acquired without the human means and appliances 
by which we have demonstrated its accuracy and acumen, it is 
a self-evident proposition that it was essentially " super human." 

But, my friends, the moment you admit one scintilla of su- 
perhuman power or conception, that moment you open the 
flood-gates of demonstration and conviction. If the power to 
read the stars was, in those ancient times, superior to modern 
art, progress and invention, in describing and ascribing the in- 
fluences exerted, for good or ill, surely the forecasts of that 
superior powder are more to be valued and emulated than the 
mere formal and routine calculations of the Applied Mathemat- 
ics of the Schools. Transits of Venus, occurring in periods 
of 8, and 122, then 8, and 105 years, again and over again, are 
interesting themes for essays and interesting bases for mathe- 
matical speculation. But the effect on human life of the near 



14 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

commensurability of the periods of Venus, is a thousand-fold 
more worthy the attention of the savant, the investigation of the 
great mind. 

The announced discovery of the satellites of Mars by Asaph 
Hall in 1877, is an evidence of the paltering and feeble nature of 
the ci (levant science, which is said to have displaced Astrology. 
Those satellites were known to .the Magi, and were recognized 
in now lost or forgotten books of Coptic lore. Somehow or 
somewhere, Zahelbebis' "Al edisiri" fell into the possession of 
Tycho Bra-he, who in his "Opera Omnia" published at Frank- 
fort, in 1648, hints (T. 4, F. 398) at the mention by the An- 
cient Master of two satellites of Mars. Jonathan Swift was 
private secretary to Sir William Temple at Moor Park. Tem- 
ple returning from the negotiation of the famous Triple Alli- 
ance, and a residence as Ambassador at The Hague, had brought 
to Flngland the copy of Tycho Brahe, which afterwards fell into 
the hands of Greene, the mathematician — the Greene, who, in 
the preface of his work on Natural Philosophy, avers that his 
contemporary and acquaintance, Isaac Newton, took his theory 
of Gravitation from Kepler, who horroived it from Tycho Brahe. 

In Sir William's study at Moor Park, Jonathan Swift read 
that "Opera Omnia" and fell upon the description of the satel- 
lites of Mars, their density, distances, periods and phases, and, 
inspired by the Spirit of Thomas Carlyle and the Nineteenth 
Century, he hailed the propositions with howling scorn. In 
order to give point to derision, Swift wrote down the Zahelbe- 
bian and Tychonian satellites as part and parcel of the ridicu- 
lous Astrology found in vogue at Laputa by Lemuel Gulliver. 

See how Shakespeare's • -whirligig of time" brings about re- 
venge. The Swift-inspired sneer, in the Spirit of Thomas 
Carlyle and the Nineteenth Century, is gravely promulgated by 
the Eminent Astronomer, Asaph Hall, as an Original Discovery 
in 1877. This original discovery, in all its attributes, and 
phases seems like a transcript of Laputan erudition, which, 
in turn is an excerpt from Brahe's rescript of Zahelbebis, a 
confessed Astrologer of A. D. 1321 — 1406, who probably got his 
information from records which were hoary ere yet Greece was 
young. 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 15 

It is not yet time to attempt a modern defence of Judicial 
Astrology. Suffice it to say that even in this age, presided 
over by the antagonistic divinity of the period of 1833 — 1903, 
there are men like my friend Prof. Grimmer who keep the 
knowledge and desire of Astrology alive. They are the seed- 
bearers, who, like the wrapped and swathed Egyptian mum- 
mies that have kept corn-germs concealed for five thousand 
years, w r ill ultimately give to the world the coveted handful of 
grain that shall fructify to vast intellectual harvests. Their 
praise will be sung by future ages. 

In regard to the following "prophecy" or u prediction," I 
have nothing to say, pro or con. I only vouch for the honesty 
of belief, integrity of purpose, and persistency of research, of 
its author, Prof. Grimmer. He may have mistaken the posi- 
tion of ruling influences in casting the Horoscope, but he is in- 
evitably correct in his deductions if his premises are correctly 
taken. . The evils therein enumerated may not fall upon Man- 
kind ; but if they do not the error is alone with Mr. Grimmer, 
not with the stars ; their predictions are unerring, the human 
interpretation is sometimes erroneous. 

Suffice it to say that no man will be damaged in purse or 
person, in mind or body, one way or another, by heeding the 
advice and warning he gives. Let men lead sober, temperate 
lives, in strict accord with our somewhat imperfectly formu- 
lated hygienic laws ; and, catastrophe or no catastrophe, baleful 
or genial atmosphere, malific or kindly influences, no matter 
what comes, they w r ill be far better off than if they had not 
pursued such a sensible course. 

And, finally, be just to all ; remember that all honest differ- 
ence of opinion is to be respected ; and give to Astrology that 
reverence due its age and achievements, and that opportunity 
which the importance of its claims demands. 

Magus Bickerstaff. 



CHAPTER III. 



Prof. Grimmer's Prediction of Astrological Wonders 
from 1881 to 1887. Startling Sensations says the Seer 
of the stars — The Warning Voice, or the Effect of 
the Coming Perihelia. 



It is pretty well understood that the perihelia of the five 
great planets — Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn — 
will be coincident in 1881-5. Astrology today is ridiculed by 
many so-called scientists. After 1881 astrology will be taught 
by many who reject it now. Bacon says "the world opposes 
what it does not understand." In the case of astrology this is 
pre-eminently so. I have no desire to discuss the verity or 
falsity of astrology ; I simply state the effects which the ap- 
proaching perihelia will produce according to astrological de- 
duction. The effects which this conjunction will produce are 
momentous. From 1881 to 1887 will be one universal carni- 
val of death. No place on earth will be entirely free from the 
plague. The Pacific coast will not suffer anything in compari- 
son to any other portion of the globe. The coincidence of 
these planets in perihelion will always produce epidemic and 
destructive diseases. Three of these planets are malifics, and 



18 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

Jupiter, although a benefic, produces evil through associa- 
tion ; or, technically, by conjunction with the others. Diseases 
will appear, the nature of which will baffle the skill of the 
most eminent physicians. Every drop of water in the earth, 
on the earth, and above the earth will be more or less poisonous. 
The atmosphere will be foul with noisome odors, and there will 
be a few constitutions able to resist the coming scourge, there- 
fore prepare, ye that are constitutionally weak, and* intemper- 
ate, and gluttonous, for "man's last home — the grave." From 
the far East the pestilential storm will sweep, and its last strug- 
gle will end in the far West. In 542 and 1665 three of the 
planets, two of which were malifics (Mars and Saturn) , were 
in perihelion, and Jupiter, though a benefic, brought evil 
through association. Now 542 and 1665 were the worst 
plague eras of which the world has any record. From 542 
to 546 it has been estimated that from 75,000,000 to 120,000,- 
000 victims suffered death by the plague ("Gibbon's His- 
tory," vol. iii., chap. xiv. ; also, "Cousin's History of Rome," 
vol. ii., page 178.) 

In 1720, Mars and Saturn were in perihelion and in the sign 
Virgo, and 52,000 out of 75,000 inhabitants died in the city of 
Marseilles in less than five weeks. In 544, 10,000 died each 
day in Constantinople. Alexandria (Egypt) lost, in 542, 50,- 
000, and in 543, 80,000 of her inhabitants by the plague. 
But as bad as were those times, they will only approximate the 
horrors of seven years many of us are doomed never to wit- 
ness. All the weak and intemperate are sure to die. There is 
no escape from the inexorable plague fiend. Fortunate indeed 
are those whose blood is pure and free from any taint or weak- 
ness, for they alone will survive the wreck of the human 
family. The intemperate and weak will join hands and go 
down to their graves in tens of thousands. Ancient races will 
be blotted from the face of the earth. Asia will be nearly de- 
populated and the islands that border Asia will suffer fright- 
fully from the scourge. The countries that join the north- 
eastern portion of Asia will suffer the ravages of the plague. 
Russia will be the first European nation that will suffer. Un- 
less correct sanitary measures are taken before 1882 the plague 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 19 

will be found devastating large cities on the Atlantic coast of 
America. America will lose more than fifteen millions of in- 
habitants if the sewers of her cities are as imperfect in 1882 
as they are today. The perihelia will bring other inflictions 
upon the inhabitants of the earth, over which mankind 
can exert no restraining influence. There will come storms 
and tidal waves that will swamp whole cities ; earth- 
quakes that will swallow mountains and towns ; and torna- 
does that will sweep hundreds of villages from the face of 
the earth ; mountains will tremble, totter and fall into sulphur- 
ous chasms ; the geography of the earth will be changed by 
volcanic action ; mountains ^ will toss their rocky heads up 
through the choicest valleys ; valleys will appear where moun- 
tains stood ; skilful mariners will be lost in the ocean, owing 
to the extraordinary variations of the compass ; navigators will 
grow pale with alarm at the capricious deflexure of the needle ; 
volcanoes that have been dormant for centuries will awaken to 
belch forth their lava with more violence than when in their 
pristine vigor ; rainfalls will deluge valleys, and mountain 
streams will enlarge their beds and become mighty torrents ; 
fires will start spontaneously and devastate whole forests ; great 
fires will occur in many cities, and some will be totally de- 
stroyed ; there will be remarkable displays of electricity, 
frightful to witness ; wild beasts will leave their natural haunts 
and crowd into populous cities, timid and harmless ; suffocat- 
ing fumes of sulphur will escape from the earth, to the great 
dread of many ; an unprecedented number of ships will be shat- 
tered in fragments by running on mighty rocks and small is- 
lands that are not down on the navigator's chart ; islands will 
appear and disappear without any apparent cause ; the naviga- 
tor's charts will prove almost a detriment instead of an aid, 
owing to the sudden changes of ocean currents, temperature, 
and surroundings ; the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, 
and even the fish in the sea, will be diseased ; billions of fish 
will die and be cast upon the seashore, to fester in the sun and 
impregnate the atmosphere with their foul emanations. No 
fish nor animal food should be eaten from 1882 till 1885, for 
the flesh of nearly all the animal kingdom and the finny tribes 



20 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

that inhabit the rivers, streams, lakes and oceans will be dis- 
eased, and therefore those who partake of the flesh shall poison 
their blood and be taken away shortly after. The poison that 
enters the system by eating diseased meats is just as deadly as 
to be inoculated with the plague. Farmers wall be so stricken 
w r ith fear that they wall cease to till their farms, and gaunt 
famine will step in to make human misery more wretched ; fa- 
naticism will spring up in many places, and bloodshed will re- 
sult therefrom ; murderers and robbers w r ill ply their hellish 
work with impunity, for there w r ill be little or no law ; every- 
body will be absorbed with the trying task of keeping alive ; 
people will be buried in deep trenches, uncoffined ; the judge 
will be stricken from the bench, the pleader at the bar, and the 
merchant and customer will be seized with the fatal malady 
while trading ; death will come slow and lingering in some 
cases, but in most it will be swift and terrible. In seaboard 
towns thousands wall be buried in the bays and harbors, the 
law T to the contrary notwithstanding. 

In many countries vast districts will be deserted, and even 
in Europe some portions will appear so near that condition as 
to appal the traveller. One may walk whole days over hun- 
dreds of farms wathout seeing a living thing. On all the large 
tracts of land that once were so animated with animal life, not 
a vestige will be seen. The houses on the deserted farms will 
show r signs of disarrangement and negligence that plainly tells 
of the hurried departure of the owners to the populous cities. 
Let a traveller pursue his way till he comes to the small vil- 
lages, many of which wall not contain a single living thing. 
Let him look into the houses, let him pass through the doors 
that stand ajar and witness the sickening spectacle of whole 
families dead. Let him still wander, if he yet have courage, 
through the country stricken with the black death, and in the 
fields, on the hillside, and in the dark canyons of the moun- 
tains, and he wall see every phase of this terrible malady, till 
the culminating point of death is reached — the end of all at- 
tacked with this incurable disease. 

The country people will flee to the crowded cities for aid, 
but unless they are rich, the physician will give them little, if 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 21 

any, attention. The poor will die by the tens of thousands, 
without a ministering hand to soothe their dying agonies. The 
doctors will be in universal demand and extortionate in charges 
for their services. Bear in mind, no medicine or doctor can 
give you any more aid than you can yourself. The disease 
cannot be cured, but unless your system is too weak or impure, 
copious draughts of warm water and a vegetarian diet, will 
prevent the disease poisoning the blood in the process of diges- 
tion. Animal food will poison those who continue the use of it. 
Fine cotton or sponge dipped into spirits of camphor, and kept 
in the nostrils, and frequently changed, will prevent the blood 
from being poisoned through the organs of respiration. After 
the black death there will be two years of fire which will rage 
with fury in all parts of the world from 1885 to 1887. These 
fires will be the means of annihilating every germ of disease. 
In fact every city or portion of city in which the plague ap- 
pears should be burned to the ground. This will destroy the 
scourge. Nothing but fire can do it. 

Those who pass through those terrible years of woe will have 
greater capacity for the enjoyment of the pleasures of the earth. 
The earth will yield twice as much as formerly. All the ani- 
mal kingdom will be more prolific and life more prolonged. 
The average duration of life is said to be thirty-three years 
now ; after the year 1887 it will be twice as long, or sixty-six 
years. The reason of this most remarkable prolongation of 
life is owing to the healthy electricity or magnetism that will 
surround this globe. From 1881 to 1887 the electricity of this 
earth will be deadly, owing to the malific influence of Saturn 
and Uranus upon our atmosphere. During the black death 
the most wonderful celestial phenomena will be seen. For 
weeks the sun will appear as red as blood, and terrible convul- 
sions will appear in that great body. The sun will discharge 
oceans of flaming hydrogen gases, that will roll in tumultuous 
billows hundreds of thousands of miles from its centre. The 
moon's actions on the tides will be spasmodic and irregular. 
Tremendous showers of meteors will fall to the earth and re- 
main in an incandescent state for hours. Dense black clouds 
will veil the sun for days, and the moon will not shed as bright 



22 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

or as steady a light as before those dreadful days. The whole 
heavens and earth will tremble at the awful, continuous reports 
of thunder — lasting frequently for hours ; blinding flashes of 
lightning will illumine the black sky ; people will scream with 
horror at the fantastic shapes the lightning will assume ; thou- 
sands will go insane with fear of the celestial phenomena ; all 
modes of egress from the cities will be stopped ; trains will be 
stopped on the prairies, in the mountains and valleys, and their 
occupants will die in them of disease and starvation ; steam- 
ships and sailing crafts will rot on the oceans with their dead 
human freight, drifting where the winds and waves may drive 
them. 

Stout will be the hearts that will not despair in these dread- 
ful times. Fanatics will arise and cry out that the hand of 
God is against mankind, and religious frenzy will be rampant 
in all the large cities ; so-called prophets will incite their fol- 
lowers to deeds of blood and rapine, but they will not hold 
sway long ; insanity from religious causes will predominate in 
those times ; the mortality in the cities where sewerage is de- 
fective will be appalling ; everything that is ate or drank should 
be boiled well before being used ; no cooked food or water 
should be partaken of if allowed to be exposed to the air for 
even a quarter of an hour ; food must be eaten as soon after be- 
ing cooked as possible ; every kind of animal food should be 
eliminated from the table ; even fish and game should not be 
used ; milk, butter, eggs, fats and oils (excepting vegetables 
oils) should be prohibited ; vegetables, grains and fruits that 
are produced in each country should be used. The electric 
condition of everything on earth will be changed, therefore the 
products of the soil in our immediate vicinity are the best to 
keep the human system in a positive state. When the human 
organism is in a positive condition, it is practically impossible 
to contract disease. All persons in a negative state as to their 
surroundings will be the first to fall victims to the scourge. 
The flesh-eater and the alcoholic imbiber will go hand in hand 
together to the grave, for their blood will become impure and 
inflamed, and therefore be in a negative state, and necessarily 
unable to combat disease. Bear in mind, no part of the world 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 23 

will be exempt from the ravages of the plague. The frigid 
homes of the Esquimaux will be invaded by the demon of 
death, and desolation will be as apparent there in that frozen 
land as on the sun-scorched sands of Africa. It will penetrate 
alike the jungles of India, and the civilized homes of America. 
The Mongolian race will suffer most, for it is without doubt 
the most ancient. Races are like empires — they have their 
rise, decline and fall. 

China will be depopulated, or nearly so, and when the plague 
breaks out in 1881, in their country, hordes of the Asiatics 
will crowd their ships and flee their country, to spread the 
loathsome horror over every land they turn to. Every island 
in the Pacific will be swarming with Mongolians, and they will 
at last reach the Pacific States, and then America must suffer 
a destruction of life without a parallel in the annals of her his- 
tory. I say that the inhabitants of the plague-stricken districts 
will reach there unless more vigilance is used with preventive 
measures to keep them back. I am not actuated by any feel- 
ing of prejudice against any particular race, but the voice of 
the host of the heavens should be hearkened unto, and, if by a 
mathematical scheme we can deduce certain facts portentous to 
the Caucasian race, they should be given and followed. In 
mortality the East India country will be next in order of mag- 
nitude to China, Africa next, Europe next, and America next. 
The Atlantic States will suffer more than the Pacific, South 
America more than North America, and California will be last 
and least sufferer of this most malignant plague era the world 
has ever known. The plague is not only what the perihelia 
bring us, but it will be accompanied by war, discord, civil 
strife, floods, inundations, and, in seven-tenths of the world, 
drouth ; and unless extraordinary provision is made to quell 
great uprisings, anarchy, with all its horrors, will reign from 
1881 to 1888. 

In 1887 the " Star of Bethlehem " will be once more seen in 
" Cassiopia's Chair," and it will be accompanied by a total 
eclipse of the sun and moon. This star only makes its appear- 
ance every 315 years. It will appear and illumine the heavens, 
and excel in brilliancy even Jupiter, when in opposition to the 



24 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

sun, and, therefore, nearer to the earth and brightest. The 
marvellous brilliancy of the " Star of Bethlehem " in 1887 will 
surpass any of its previous visitations. It will be seen even at 
noonday, shining with a quick, flashing light the entire year, 
after which it will gradually decrease in brightness and finally 
disappear, not to return to our heavens till the year 2202 or 
315 years from 1887. This star first attracted the attention of 
modern astronomers in the year 1572. It was then called a 
new star. It was no new star, however, for this was the star 
that shone so brightly 4 B. C, and was the star that illumined 
the heavens at the nativity of Christ. It has reappeared every 
315 years since, and every educated astrologer is certain that it 
will appear in August, 1887. The appearance of this star, 
-accompanied as it will be by solar and lunar eclipses, together 
with the baleful influence that follows the positions that Mars 
and Saturn will occupy, will cause an universal war and por- 
tentous floods and fearful shipwrecks. North America will be 
involved in civil strife, and a reign of terror will prevail in the 
Atlantic States, unless a Napoleon arises to quell it. There 
will be a war of classes — the rich will array themselves against 
the poor, and vice versa everywhere. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE APPREHENSIONS AND THEORIES OF COLONEL BLANTON 
DUNCAN OF KENTUCKY. 



On Monday, Jan. 3, 1881, there appeared in the New York 
Star, a communication from Col. Blanton Duncan, of Ken- 
tucky, of such remarkable nature as to at once challenge at- 
tention, and secure reproduction in the newspapers at large. 

Col. Blanton Duncan is a gentleman of national reputation. 
He is an exceptionally well-read man, even in a community 
distinguished for erudite and cultured people, and his opinions 
on the subject of u The Coming Catastrophe" necessarily carry 
great weight with them. It will be recollected of Col. Dun- 
can that he rebelled against the action of the Democratic Con- 
vention of Baltimore, in 1872, in indorsing the Cincinnati Lib- 
eral nomination of Horace Greeley for President, and led the 
objectors to the convention of St. Louis, wherein Charles 
O'Conor of New York was nominated. Although this action 
did not result in the election of Mr. O'Conor, it contributed 
greatly to the defeat of Mr. Greeley, which latter consumma- 
tion was not the least of the aims of Mr. Duncan. 



26 THE COMING CATASTROPHE . 

The fact that so calm and judicious a statesman as Charles 
O'Conor approved the action of Mr. Duncan, and accepted the 
nomination so secured by that gentleman's rebellion against 
the machine rule of his political party, is a high tribute to Mr. 
Duncan, and adds dignity to his subsequent public acts and ut- 
terances. 

The publishers of l ' The Coming Catastrophe " have included 
Mr. Duncan's very able and ingenious paper in this book and 
chapter by his permission. Mr. Duncan writes : 

1 c The sweeping wave of cold which enveloped our hemi- 
sphere in November, and then swept over the eastern continent, 
is succeeded now by a second wave of such intensity and di- 
mensions, that no record exists of one as great. Whence can we 
deduce the cause, other than that great primal cause — God — 
who works his will through physical, as well as human, events? 
The scientists theorize that the glaciation of the earth may have 
been produced by some of the great irregularities in its motions, 
which recur, according to their calculations, at regular periods 
of many thousand years. At present our aphelion position 
(greatest distance from the sun) occurs in the summer solstice. 
But there is a coincidence of the aphelion with the winter sol- 
stice (Dec. 21,) once in 21,356 years. For polar glaciation 
that is the most favorable condition. There is, again, variation 
of the earth's axis to the plane of its orbit, passing through a 
double oscillation every 10,000 years. Third, there is a change 
in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit in every 100,000 years. 
The oscillation, it is said, prolongs or withdraws the heat of 
the sun's rays in the polar regions. The change of orbit makes 
at present the summer months eight days longer than the win- 
ter months, in which our perihelion occurs. Astronomers tell 
us that something dreadful in the way of glaciation would oc- 
cur if three conditions existed at the same time : 

1. Winter solstice in aphelion. 

2. Obliquity of the ecliptic at minimum. 

3. Eccentricity of orbit at maximum. 

Fortunately these can only happen in coincidence once in 
42,000,000 years. The next greatest trouble would be in the 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 27 

coincidence of No. 1 and No. 3. Fortunately again that only 
happens once in 4,200,000 years. 

I have not the date of either of these coincidences, but scarce- 
ly think any of us Trill ever live on earth to see one. But some 
scientists say that the last glacial epoch could have been pro- 
duced by cause No. 1, the winter solstice of Dec. 21 coincid- 
ing with aphelion. They date the last coincidence in its inten- 
sity at about the year 9427 B. C. ; and say that alone may 
have produced the glaciation of the earth. We have no record 
for reference to prove that extraordinary changes may not have 
been made by the attraction of the great planets in perihelia at 
the same time. And as the occurrence of the two coincidences, 
No. 1 and No. 3, would produce wonderfully intense glacia- 
tion, our astronomers have only surmise to base any dicta that 
the joint perihelia of the great planets about 30,876 B. C. (if 
the planets and the earth were in existence,) did not cause these 
very effects. An oscillation of the earth may then have been 
effected, not only to produce the second but the third cause — 
an exact coincidence for cold beyond even the power of human 
calculation ; and which would account for the wonderfully pre- 
served remains of extinct animals found beneath the great 
mountains of ice on the northern shores of Siberia. According 
to Professor Agassiz, who made a great study of the glacier 
theory, the catastrophe which enveloped all of the Old World 
north of the thirty-fifth parallel with huge mountains of ice was 
sudden. His theory has been adopted by nearly all the great 
geologists. The last intensity of glaciation has been dated in 
the year 9427 B. C. The preceding intense period was 21,356 
years before, or in the year 30,783. There were perihelia of 
the four great planets in 30,878-30,876 ; 30,876-30,872, one 
of the shortest periods except ours of 1880-85 ; and again three 
of the planets in 30,711. The aphelion of the earth in 30,878-2 
must have been on Dec. 20, the day before winter solstice, and 
in 30,711, on Dec. 22 ; and most likely that was a period of 
remarkable events, if the planetary influences occasion them. 
Science is but at the threshold of the door which open3 for even 
a glimpse of knowledge, or, more properly speaking, conjec- 
ture, of the occurrences of past ages, if there was animal and 



28 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

vegetable life upon the globe prior to the creation of Adam. If 
the five days of the Bible prior to the creation of man were, as 
Christian geologists maintain, periods of time vast in extent, as 
denoted by . a God to whom 'a thousand years are but as a 
day/ it would be easy to conceive that the earth had this 
change of climates in those remote ages. Siberia may then 
have been in the tropics, until the change of orbit and the other 
coincidences instantly converted everything living into a frozen 
mass. And the other portions of the earth, up to that time in 
frozen regions, were of course untenanted by animal life. The 
phenomena exist on this continent, indicating from the studies 
of geologists that vast mountains of ice, for thousands of years, 
extended south of our lakes, if not south of the fortieth parallel. 
Fossil remains of extinct animals also have been found beneath 
where they say these icy mountains once existed. They have 
found nothing yet to prove the existence of a former race of 
men. If there should be another change of climate and the 
polar regions become tropical again, future geologists may 
search beneath the melted ice to discover buried pre- Adamite 
giants assimilating in size to the mammoths of the brute crea- 
tion, which have caused such widespread speculation. On this 
subject the following picture was drawn by Henri Yivarez : 

' From the summit of the mountain a winding sheet of snow 
will descend upon the high plateaus and the valleys, driving 
before it life and civilization and masking forever the cities and 
nations that it meets on its passage. Life and human activity 
will press insensibly toward the inter-tropical zone. St. Pe- 
tersburg, Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, Constantinople and 
Rome will fall asleep in succession under the eternal shroud. 
During very many ages the equatorial humanity will undertake 
Arctic expeditions to find again under the ice the place of Paris, 
Lyons, Bordeaux and Marseilles. The sea coast will have 
changed and the geographical map of the earth will have been 
transformed. No one will live and breathe any more, except 
in the equatorial zone, up to the day when the last family, 
nearly dead with cold and hunger, will sit on the shore of the 
last sea in the rays of the sun, which will thereafter shine here 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 29 

below on an ambnlent tomb, revolving aimlessly around a use- 
less light and a barren heat.' 

"With the increase of knowledge and of science the means of 
transit would permit many to escape from a polarized region to 
one susceptible of sustaining life. If our fertile fields should 
be transformed into sterile wastes, 1000 feet beneath snow and 
ice. the masses of people could expect nothing but death. And 
the new regions, which would be but a wilderness, could not 
be brought into cultivation or made habitable for many years 
to come. If the great planets have hitherto aided in such 
changes, their remarkable perihelia from 1880 to 1885. crowd- 
ed into a shorter space of time than ever before since 1530 B. 
C, give rise to conjecture that something more than extraor- 
dinary may be expected to occur. Now all of the four great 
planets are on the same side of the sun, and approaching their 
nearest distance or perihelion (except Jupiter, which has lately- 
passed perihelion) , and the earth is likewise in perihelion. 
When planets are in the same direct line, as compared to the 
earth, though one is far beyond the other in space, they seem 
to touch each other in the heavens, and that is called conjunc- 
tion. When planets are exercising their powers of attraction 
on the earth, from different directions, they neutralize each 
other so far as any change of the earth's axis or orbit might be 
effected. But when these poAvers are exerted at once and all 
in the same direct line, pulling the earth as it were into a dif- 
ferent orbit, in a manner such as never before has been chroni- 
cled since the creation of Adam, who can say that such a coin- 
cidence may not mark the coming of wonderful events ? And 
who that does not accord with the materialism and infidelity of 
the age can consider this subject in a spirit of levity, rather 
than give that careful and serious consideration which its grav- 
ity demands ? Astronomers tell us that stars have suddenly 
appeared where none had before been seen, and grew more and 
more brilliant until they finally faded away to invisibility. And 
they construe this phenomenon to have been some far remote 
sun. which had been consumed and overwhelmed in enormous 
conflagration, consigning its retinue of worlds to utter darkness, 
and the destruction of all life that previously existed upon them. 



30 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

Our sun is stated by these scientists to be a sea of fire, with 
flames travelling over its surface faster than the earth moves in 
its orbit. One flame has been measured to have shot out 80,- 
000 miles, and then disappear in ten minutes. Sir John Her- 
schel estimated that a solid cylinder of ice 200,000 miles long 
and forty-five miles in diameter would melt in a single second 
if plunged into the sun. If these conjectures are based upon 
truth our sun, from certain causes and influences, may be con- 
suming itself just like one of those lost suns. And if it did be- 
come cold we would freeze in an instant. We are but insig- 
nificant in the wonderful universe, if science reads correctly. 
For our sun, with its retinue of worlds and their satellites, is 
but a mere planet itself, sweeping onward in an orbit at the 
rate of 150,000,000 miles a year. And the central attraction 
around which our sun revolves — in an orbit so vast and a cen- 
tre so remote that science has as yet discovered nothing definite 
— is located by astronomers in the Pleiades. And God, through 
his prophet, Job, long thousands of years ago, indicated this 
in the Bible records. 'Canst thou bind the sweet influences of 
Pleiades?' The influences of the planets are known to be 
greater at some times than at others. Mars can come within 
33,000,000 miles of the earth and go again to a distance of 
244,000,000. In the first case, the attraction and disturbance 
of the earth will be fifty-two times greater than in the second. 
The moon, though its whole attraction is only 1-120 of the 
sun's, is yet nearly three times as great in its effect upon the 
earth's surface, as plainly proved by the tides. In the past 
year we have had 117 different conjunctions of the planets and 
moon and sun to exercise their influences upon the earth. As 
the earth approached her perihelion the great planets, nearly in 
perihelion, were placed in nearly direct line, opposed to the sun 
(and with the earth between them and the sun) , pulling with 
united force the earth toward them. These influences have not 
been so united, as I have already said, since the creation of 
Adam. The moon has been in conjunction with these planets 
every month. A top spins well up its axis, and around in an 
orbit, by the well-known laws of motion, if let alone. A very 
slight cause would change both. And so, as we have never 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 31 

had facts to tell us what such a coincidence of planets may 
cause, we may well conjecture that something might happen 
which the scientists cannot fathom or foresee. If the globe 
should suddenly stop in rotation on its axis, though we contin- 
ued on in our orbit, everything on the surface, including oceans, 
buildings, trees, would be hurled headlong into space. If the 
motion, on the other hand, should be increased in proper pro- 
portion, all loose bodies would fly off from the earth, like water 
from a swift-flying grindstone ; and men would require chains 
on their legs, like fastened bull-dogs, to hold them to the earth. 
Cold is produced by regular influences, and human science now 
is able to foretell approximately the occurrence of great cold. 
They cannot yet tell what is the creative cause. I firmly be- 
lieve that the planetary influence has brought us the unprece- 
dented cold in November and now. And science will in the 
next three years have abundant opportunity from the most start- 
ling events to learn what the planets can do." 



CHAPTER V. 



It is possible to find germs of Astrological belief in scientific conjectures; and, 
as has been shown, it is manifestly impossible to state a conjectural astronomi- 
cal proposition which does not include Judicial Astrology.— [Bickerstaif "On 
Scientific Relations." 



When I penned the foregoing lines in my work "On Scien- 
tific Relations" (New York, 1873), I had in mind exactly the 
emergency which has arisen in the course of this elaboration 
of Professor Grimmer' s Prediction. 

Colonel Blanton Duncan, of Louisville, in Kentucky, a 
writer with whom I am unacquainted, but who, I surmise, 
must be a gentleman of acknowledged ability and conceded 
authority, has had his incisive attention drawn to this very 
subject, and, apparently without concert, has written on the 
topic. He evidently sees in the unusual attitude of the celes- 
tial bodies a cause for thought, if not for fear, as to the ulti- 
mate effect on the Human Race of the malific conjunctions 
which are impending. 

It is evident that the writer has not studied deeply or in- 
quired anxiously into the mysteries of Astrology. Yet it is no 
less evident that he is a man of great penetration, and pos- 
sessed of that logical power of reasoning from present cause to 



34 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

future effect, so rare as to be hailed as prophecy. Yet it is 
but the operation of exceptional synthetical power of mind, 
whose conclusions are wonderful to the ordinary mind, pos- 
sessed of only the ordinary analytical ability, which distin- 
guishes an oyster and a learned pig, as much as it does the 
caviller at Astrology. 

Beginning with the atmospheric conditions of the closing 
months of 1880, Mr. Duncan draws a startling picture of pos- 
sibilities in certain events and conjunctures, in which he sus- 
tains, in great measure, the predictions of Professor Grimmer ; 
and that, too, probably without ever having seen the Profes- 
sor's writings. He joins those events, conditions, and possi- 
bilities exactly with the sources from which Mr. Grimmer 
draws his inspiration. The Professor acknowledges his belief 
in Astrology ; Mr. Duncan would probably hesitate to do so. 

It is, nevertheless, patent that the same conclusion being 
drawn from the same premises, the authors are entirely con- 
sonant. 

Agassiz and Henri Vivarez gave to the question of stellar 
influence on mundane affairs the thought which great minds in 
all ages have deemed worthy the importance of the subject, 
and they expressed ideas exactly in line with Prof. Grimmer 
and Blanton Duncan. ' ; And who that does not accord with 
the materialism and infidelity of the age can consider this sub- 
ject in a spirit of levity, rather than give that careful and seri- 
ous consideration which its gravity demands ?" So writes Mr. 
Blanton Duncan ; and so every thoughtful man in the commun- 
ity would urge if not deterred by the fear of the ridicule such 
an expression of faith in Judicial Astrology would probably 
provoke in this skeptical and mistaken era. 

"The god whom ye ignorantly worship, I proclaim openly," 
said the eminent Apostle to the Gentiles, and the belief which 
secretly agitates three-fourths of the thinking men and women 
of America to-day, is the one included in Prof. Grimmer's Pre- 
diction. No one will deny the vital necessity of the sun's heat 
to earth-life. No one will deny that the withdrawal of that 
heat would blot out the most ultimate and intimate germ of life 
on this globe. How can any one, then, deride the science of 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 35 

Astrology which proceeds frorn undeniable base and seeks, to 
.anticipate the inevitable ? It is not a speculative but an exact 
science. Given certain causes and such unavertable results will 
ensue. Given certain planetary conjunctions and aspects, and 
the goverance they exert on events rising under them cannot be 
resisted. 

If it is within the power of thought to antedate such a com- 
mon occurrence as a lunar eclipse, the power being derived 
from simple observation, comparison and deduction, what limit 
are you to assign to predictions founded on known laws and 
calculable events ? Boyd tells us that the puzzling astronomi- 
cal records of extremely ancient times were not made for the 
latitude of the Pyramids, but for regions nearly thirty degrees 
farther north, namely, about fifty-nine degrees and thirty min- 
utes, — within the boundaries of Siberia. If it can be demon- 
strated that men can, with accuracy, determine such abstruse 
problems as that exploited by Mr. Boyd, then we must acknow- 
ledge that the forecasting of events, from the operations, mo- 
tions and influences of the same objects, is not only possible 
but extremely probable. 

Horace, in the Third Ode of his First Book, declares "Nil 
mortalibus ardui est" (nothing is impossible to man) , and 
Horace was a philosopher and a keen observer. His expres- 
sion includes this very contingency and was intended to cover 
just such cases. 

The opposition to Judicial Astrology has taken its rise in two 
mistakes of humanity. First, in the supposition that man is 
the crowning work of creation. And second, that man's im- 
portance cannot brook control of influences not supposed to pro- 
ceed directly from the Creator, and intended for man's especial 
benefit. The absurdity of both these positions is extreme. 
Man in relation to nature, is merely a bifurcated animalcule, 
crawling about on a speck of cosmic dust floating through 
space. And the operations of Nature are carried on independ- 
ent of and indifferent to man's existence. The only import- 
ance, which can rightly be claimed for mankind, is the devel- 
oped ability to reason in a restricted circle, and calculate on an 
infinitesimal line of causation. So long as man had the proper 



36 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

regard for his own insignificance, he reverenced the Masters 
who had gone beyond the ordinary bounds of perception. But 
once the impression gained ground that earth and space were 
appenages of humanity, impatience of acknowledgment of con- 
trol cropped out ; and the race, under leadership of vanity, re- 
fused to acquiesce in natural and rational postulates. 

Let us consider that in our immediate neighborhood, that is 
in the stream of worlds flowing down the Galaxy, there are 
bodies so vast that our little solar satellite is, in comparison, 
but as a grain of sand. When we can persuade ourselves that 
this earth might be driven upon one of those real worlds, with 
the accelerated velocity of a thousand years' projection, and, 
coming in contact therewith, make hardly a dent on its surface, 
and not disturb its harmony in the least, then we begin to ap- 
preciate our utter insignificance. Then we will regard the 
possibility of control over mundane affairs being exercised by 
extra-mundane existences, as something to stand aghast at. 
Then we will be chary of exalting our own importance or dep- 
recating the judgment and predictions of men, who have al- 
ready arrived at that just conception and shaped their judgments 
to their perceptions. This is an element which must not be 
lost sight of in considering Prof Grimmer' s Prediction and Mr. 
Blanton Duncan's Apprehensions. Great among men they are 
mere points in Nature, as are all of us. We have position 
but not magnitude. 

Fatalism, that deadening weight on energy, grew out of the 
same error of magnification. "What is to be, will be" is a 
sequence to the idea that man is so important as to have had all 
natural laws framed especially for his behoof and in his behalf. 
The impossibility of averting those natural laws has palsied 
much brave endeavor, and entailed many curses of abuse and 
perverted belief upon mankind. Judicial Astrology, however, 
teaches that man was not at all a circumstance, but merely an 
outgrowth or accident, of pre-existing laws and influences. 
Therefore, he could not, in the individual, nor in the aggregate, 
have been the object of set operations. He comes upon this 
planet under conditions and aspects, which, at the time of his 
individual coming, determine the bent of his existence. Now, 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 37 

certain appreciable and calculable influences will continually at- 
tend his sojourn in life, and lie is, to the main extent, the 
creature of those influences. But as unpredisposed law oper- 
ated to his production, it follows that other unpredisposed laws 
will modify his career. 

The man who did not sail on the lost City of Boston, was 
not fated to be preserved from the mysterious catastrophe 
which fell upon the passengers. On the contrary, his death 
may be still more mysterious or horrible. He was not fated 
to stay, any more than his being fated to go was presaged by 
his unconsummated intention. Every human being is under 
control of ever-changing mutations and conditions, which, 
weaving and interlacing, impressing and deviating, make up 
the diverse patterns of life, in which no two lives have either 
similar causes or similar conclusions. 

Special Providences, so-called, are not to be admitted under 
such a scheme as this. Events which seem out of the common 
are only strange because we cannot separate the multitude of 
causes which have joined to precipitate them. They are sim- 
ply operations of laws over whose results knowledge has given 
us no supervision. Now, the predictions of Astrology are of 
precisely this regard. The Master-mind sees certain causes, 
hidden from the ignorant, converging, and works out a com- 
prehension of the resultant force and the direction it will take. 
It cannot be denied that this is both reasonable and possible. 

Why, then, challenge Astrology and relegate it to the shades 
of useless and impotent effort? It is a science which seeks to 
curb the vain aspirations of man, to lay down principles for 
his guidance, and to teach him to shape his own destiny by 
getting into the currents of causes whose tendency would be to 
bless and benefit the race. M. Bickerstaff. 



^w 



» 



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CHAPTER VI. 



AN ABLE REVIEW OF SOME CORRESPONDENCE PROVOKED BY 

PROFESSOR GRIMMER'S PREDICTION THE VIEWS OF DR. 

JONATHAN CUMMINGS, EDITOR OF THE AGE TO COME 
HERALD. 



It is now very generally understood that the four major 
planets of our solar system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Nep- 
tune — will all make their perihelion passages within a period 
of five years. Jupiter was in perihelion in September of the 
present year, 1880 ; Uranus and Neptune will both be in peri- 
helion in 1882, and Saturn in 1885. 

It is claimed by some that this perihelion period will be very 
destructive to animal and vegetable life, cause much damage to 
property, change the topography of the earth in some localities, 
and keep the great deep in constant commotion. Hence it is 
expected that dreadful pestilences, sudden deaths, fearful wars, 
an increased number of horrid murders, shocking suicides, hor- 
rible railroad accidents, and crimes of almost every description, 
superinduced by a sort of mental aberration, severe droughts, 
great storms, terrible earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic erup- 



40 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

tions, and unprecedented "distress of nations with perplexity/' 
which our Saviour predicted more than eighteen centuries ago 
should come at the end of this present age. 

The dissemination of these and similar views has led many 
to inquire why the perihelia of the planets should bring such 
dire calamities upon the earth and its inhabitants ; and why 
this particular period should cause greater disasters than any 
preceding perihelia period? To these questions we will en- 
deavor to give brief answers. 

First : An answer to these queries is found in the universal 
law of matter, discovered by Sir Isaac Newton : 

"Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every 
other particle with a force proportioned to the quantity of mat- 
ter in each, and decreasing as the squares of the distances which 
separate the particles increase." 

From this it is readily seen that the amount of this attractive 
force, or attraction of gravitation, depends upon the size of the 
planets and their distance from the sun ; and as their orbits 
around the sun are all elliptical, it follows that they are not 
always at the same distance from that great central orb, and 
consequently the attraction of gravitation between each planet 
and the sun is not only great or small, according to the size of 
the planet, but varies also according to its distance from the 
sun ; hence when any planet is in perihelion, this attractive 
force is greater than at any other time, which, affecting the 
sun, affects the earth also through the sun, and causes a dis- 
turbance of its atmosphere. 

It is a well-known fact that as the sun is positive and the 
earth negative, the currents of electricity are constantly passing 
from the sun to the earth. It is also a fact, whether well- 
known or not, that a slight disturbance of the electrical currents 
has an injurious effect upon the earth. This is true also of the 
human body. Disturb the currents of electricity in the human 
body, and it is injured. If any one will lean against a con- 
ductor of electricity, say a stone post, in a short time he will 
be quite likely to suppose he has taken cold, or will feel neu- 
ralgic or rheumatic pains. He may know the cause was lean- 
ing against the stone post ; but how did that affect him ? By 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 41 

disturbing the currents of electricity in his body, and conduct- 
ing too much from his system. 

If Newton's law of attraction of gravitation is true, it is per- 
fectly plain that the perihelion of any planet must have some 
effect upon the earth ; the larger the planet the greater the 
effect. Jupiter being the largest, has the greatest effect. When 
two or more planets are in perihelion at or near the same time, 
the effect is increased accordingly. 

To deny Newton's law is to deny what has been demon- 
strated to be true, and what science and all astronomers have 
admitted. There may sometimes be beneficial influences from 
some source, to counteract in some measure the malific influ- 
ence of a perihelia period upon the earth ; but in the present 
period we think the evil is more likely to be augmented by 
comets, which are making their appearance more frequently 
than usual. 

Second : The present perihelia period is established by pre- 
cedent. 

It is found by the history of many centuries that Jupiter's 
perihelion passages, which occur a little less than every twelve 
years, have produced evil results upon the earth. It is large, 
and its influence is known to be greater than any other planet 
of the solar system, except the sun. Saturn, as it is second in 
size, is second also in influence to Jupiter. When Jupiter's per- 
ihelion passages have been synchronous with Saturn's, which 
occurs every second passage of Saturn and fifth of Jupiter, or 
once in about fifty-nine years, the evil has been augmented ; 
and when these planets were joined by either Uranus or Nep- 
tune, of course the evil was increased ; and when comets have 
appeared in conjunction with the perihelia of the planets, which 
Noah Webster in his "History of Pestilence and Epidemics" 
considered to be the primary cause of aggravated diseases, the 
injurious effect upon the earth and its inhabitants became in- 
tensified. 

Thus history, for thousands of years, in recording pesti- 
lences, famines, earthquakes, etc., which have brought so much 
misery upon the human family, has been aiding modern science 
in ascertaining the cause of these calamities ; and all the wis- 



42 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

dom of the wise, and learning of the educated, and theories of 
the old schools, will not be able to overthrow the new arguments 
founded upon these unprecedented facts. No man's theoretical 
opinions, however great his reputation for learning may be, can 
stand before the evidence of such facts. Give the common peo- 
ple a sufficient knowledge of astronomy to understand the rela- 
tive position of the planets to the sun, and to each other, with 
the date of the perihelia periods for the last two thousand years ; 
then give them the history and date of the calamities which 
have befallen the earth and its inhabitants by aggravated dis- 
eases of various kinds during the same time, and they will ask 
for no further evidence for the cause of the disasters than the 
perihelia theory. 

Third : Why should it be expected that this perihelia period, 
which has now already commenced, will be more calamitous 
than other periods which have preceded it ? 

Principally from the fact that the four large planets will now 
make their perihelion passages nearer to a synchronous adjust- 
ment, probably, than ever before ; at least for the last three 
thousand years. The four major planets all making their peri- 
helion passages within five years, is, we believe, without a par- 
allel in the Adamic age. Then the appearance already of sev- 
eral comets on their perihelion passages near the sun, which 
also have an injurious effect upon our earth, strengthens the 
argument, as Dr. Knapp says, that we shall soon see lively 
times for the doctors and undertakers ; in fact, such times have 
already commenced. We might easily fill a volume with just 
such disasters as it is predicted this perihelia will bring, which 
have come to our notice within the past year, and the end is 
not yet. All these are the beginning of sorrows. 

We will now call attention to two articles which have ap- 
peared in the Cambridge Tribune, and add our criticisms to 
both. It appears The Tribune had published Professor Grim- 
mer's argument on the perihelia of the planets, which called 
forth the first article referred to, over the signature of Sidney 
Brooks, in that paper of Nov. 19, 1880. The second article 
is a criticism of the first, and also of Professor Grimmer's ar- 
gument, by Magus Bickerstaff, in The Tribune of Nov. 25. 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 43 

We propose to add strictures and criticize both, and defend 
Professor Grimmer's statements in the main, while in some re- 
spects we admit that he may have exaggerated ; though it is 
yet too early to state this positively. Mr. Brooks speaks as 
follows : 



PROFESSOR GRIMMER AND HIS PROPHECY. 



"I agreed to jot down my impressions in reading this article, 
and first — 

If those four planets were all on the same side of the sun at 
once, they might pull hard enough to produce some slight irreg- 
ularity — I know not what — but the perihelions of the planets 
are not all on the same side of the sun, and so their attractions 
counter-balance each other. [Note 1.] 

On a scientific basis, there is nothing at all, as I can see, to 
favor Professor Grimmer's predictions. He bases them on As- 
trology, which I consider about equal to telling fortunes by tea- 
grounds. [Note 2.] 

He speaks of the malific or evil planets bringing plagues, etc. 
'From 1880 to 1887,' he says, 'the electricity of the earth 
will be deadly, owing to the malific influences of Saturn and 
Uranus upon our atmosphere.' To say that two planets of our 
system have the power, in themselves, to change the electricity 
of our globe or the atmosphere into poisonous agents, is too 
much for our common sense. [Note 3.] 

Speaking of the condition of things after the calamity is over, 
he says the electricity of the earth will be most healthful and 
human life will be twice as long as now. Why the same agent 
(electricity or magnetism) should be at one time most deadly, 
and at another time most healthful, he gives no reason for. 
[Note 4.] 

If Astrology takes the ground that the position of certain 
heavenly bodies is only the sign of coming calamities, then 



44 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

what ? Such monstrous and universal horrors as he describes 
I think are a dishonor to the Almighty. In fact he ascribes 
the evil influence to evil agents independent of Almighty power 
I should think. Such a wholesale slaughter of mankind is not 
the way God has worked in times past. In his severest judg- 
ments he has always held out inducements to return, and en- 
couraged the use of proper means to avert evils. We abate the 
cholera and yellow fever by attention to drainage and all sani- 
tary measures. We doubt not that the great plague in London, 
in 1665, was produced, or, at least, spread immensely, by neg- 
lect of such measures. That which is receiving so much at- 
tention now, viz., sewer gas and kindred poisons, are sufficient 
without going to the planets for malign influences. [Note 5.] 

Prof. Grimmer, it is true, notices these things, but my 
thought is, that he makes such direful influences to come from 
some source, as he says, 'direful wars in North America, and 
floods, and shipwrecks, and burnings, and fightings between 
the rich and poor ; such an entire wreck of the elements, that 
no human efforts can avail against them.' My argument is 
that God will not permit such an awful state of things. It 
would be the utter extinction of his mercy and love to man- 
kind. I feel safe in trusting in God. [Note 6.] 

I regard such a prediction as unhealthy, even to the Chris- 
tian. It is what Christ warned his disciples against as false 
prophets and false Christs, and Paul says to the Thessalonians, 
'Be not troubled as that the day of the Lord is at hand/ 
[Note 7.] 

The final destiny of our planet, it is true, we know little 
about ; but I believe we have other information on this point. 

Nothing is plainer in the Bible than the coming of the Mil- 
lennium, or the time when the Gospel shall overspread the 
earth. As Christ distinctly says, that before the end should 
come this Gospel must be preached to every nation under the 
whole heavens. This period is rapidly advancing, and a long 
reign of Christ's kingdom on earth is in store for us. [Note 8.] 

The second Adventists differ from us in saying the Millenium 
Period is to come after and not before the general judgment. 
I must confess, when I see such wickedness abounding all over 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 45 

our country as exists at the present day, I say to myself: 'The 
Adventists maybe right.' When Christ sat upon the Mount 
of Olives and answered the questions of the disciples, what he 
said about the destruction of Jerusalem came out as he said, to 
the utmost detail. [Note 9.] 

As the Jews were terribly punished for rejecting and crucify- 
ing their Messiah, so he told his disciples, in answer to their 
second question, there would be a general judgment, when be- 
fore him would be gathered all nations. [Note 10.] 

Until that time comes, I believe there will be no such havoc 
and indiscriminate destruction of mankind. It must be con- 
sidered that we live in a world where God's mercy and good- 
ness prevail, and multitudes are being converted to Him. 
[Note 11.] 

In a word I must say, that I do not believe in these predic- 
tions ; they have not the weight of a feather with me. [Note 
12.] 

But to each of us the words spoken to Daniel are applicable : 
'Go thy way, Daniel, till the end be, for thou shalt rest and 
stand in thy lot at the end of the days.' " Sidney Brooks. 



OUR REVIEW OF MR. BROOKS IN NOTES. 



[Note 1 ] We know nothing of this gentleman, except by 
what he says in this short article, but presume he is considered 
a competent writer upon some subjects, otherwise this produc- 
tion would not have found its way into a paper so ably con- 
ducted as The Tribune. But his first sentence here shows that 
he does not understand the subject about which he is writing, 
and that his criticisms are of no weight. He says : u If these 
four planets were all on the same side of the sun at once, they 
might pull hard enough to produce some slight irregularity," he 
does not know what. 



4:6 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

We will here take the liberty to inform the gentleman that on 
the 19th day of June, 1881, not only the four major planets, 
but Mars, Venus, and Mercury likewise, will all be on one side 
of the sun at once ; while the earth and moon alone will be on 
the opposite side, with the moon on the side of the earth 
toward the sun. They may "pull hard enough to produce 
some slight irregularity," and he may by that time find out 
"what." 

[Note 2.] When Mr. Brooks tells us he can see nothing on 
a scientific basis to favor Prof. Grimmer's predictions, he ad- 
mits that his knowledge of science is quite limited, to say the 
least; and his statement that he considers them " about equal 
to telling fortunes by tea-grounds," confirms our opinion, and 
shows that he had no better argument to bring. 

[Note 3.] If Grimmer speaks of "evil planets," he must 
have blundered ; for the planets are not evil, but their nearness 
to the sun when in perihelion causes a disturbance in the at- 
mosphere of our earth, which produces the evil results. Either 
Mr. Brooks' "common sense," which he makes the standard 
here, must be of a low order, or his reading very deficient upon 
the subject of electricity. 

[Note 4.] Here is a difficulty which Prof. Grimmer did 
not explain, for the very good reason, probably, that he did 
not suppose anything so well known as that two and two make 
four needed any explanation. The writer does not seem to be 
any better informed upon the subject of electricity than he is 
upon the perihelia of the planets. If he will look the matter 
up, he will find that no person can live one moment unless the 
currents of electricity are coursing through the ramifications of 
the nerves, and that a disturbance of that mighty force will 
cause instant death. The same agent, Mr. Brooks,— elec- 
tricity — may u be at one time most deadly, and at another time 
most healthful," owing to the conditions which govern it. 

[Note 5.] In this paragraph the writer thinks such calam- 
ities as the professor speaks of would dishonor the Almighty. 
"Such a wholesale slaughter of mankind," he says, "is not the 
way God has worked in times past." We wonder if Mr. 
Brooks ever read of the flood ; or of the destruction of Sodom 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 47 

and Gomorrah ; or of Sennacherib's army, when one hundred 
and eighty-five thousand were killed in one night by an angel? 
Does he not know of the dreadful slaughter of the Jews, both 
by the Babylonians and Romans, and of many other cities and 
nations, by God's appointment? He is either very forgetful, 
or has never read, or he does not credit the Bible account of 
these wholesale slaughters. 

[Note 6.] Mr. Brooks feels safe trusting in God. And yet 
he thinks the plague in London was spread immensely by neg- 
lecting sanitary measures. They were probably trusting in 
God, as he intends to trust him through this perihelia period — 
do nothing to avoid the danger ! He thinks such a "slaughter 
would show the utter extinction of God's love and mercy to 
mankind ;" and yet he recognizes God's right to punish sin. 
Has the human family become suddenly righteous, that they 
need no punishment now ? 

[Note 7.] The statements here are all random shots, and 
show that the writer understands neither the perihelia of the 
planets, nor how to make an application of the prophecies. 

[Note 8.] This paragraph is true, but it is not all the 
truth. The writer does not seem to remember that just before 
the Millennium there is to be a time of trouble such as never 
was since there was a nation. How does he know but that 
the predictions of Grimmer, caused by the perihelia of the 
planets, will fulfil all such prophecies, which are very numer- 
ous? We think Prof. Grimmer, in the main, is right; that 
the time of trouble will come, followed by the Millennium, in 
which the world will be converted to God. 

[Note 9.] Here is an admission that the world is very 
wicked ; and that the Adventists, who are looking for this 
earth to be melted, which would spoil the Bible account of the 
Millennium, may be right. He mixes and confounds matters 
strangely. 

[Note 10.] Here is an admission that the Jews were "ter- 
ribly punished." Were they any worse than the present gen- 
eration? If that was God's way then in dealing with sinners, 
why not now ? And will not an affliction now caused by the 
perihelia of the planets be just as much sent of God as were 



48 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

the Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem ? We can see no rea- 
son why. 

[Note 11.] Mr; Brooks looks for no such havoc until the 
judgment comes ; and how does he know that the judgment is 
not near? Christ's reign is the judgment day, and Mr. Brooks 
says it is "rapidly advancing." Thus, according to his own 
admissions, "an awful state of things" is just upon us, as bad 
or worse than Professor Grimmer has predicted, as the result 
of the perihelia period, which has already commenced. 

[Note 12.] Grimmer' s predictions, he says, have not the 
weight of a feather ! Then what importance should be at- 
tached to these inconsistent, contradictory, and erroneous state- 
ments, made to demolish an argument which has not the weight 
of a feather ? If no sounder criticisms than these can be brought 
against Grimmer's predictions, they may yet all prove to be 
true. 

The following is Mr. BickerstaiF's criticisms of both Grim- 
mer and Brooks : 



PROFESSOR GRIMMER AND MR. BROOKS. 



As between Professor Grimmer and Mr. Sidney Brooks, I 
have the honor to maintain that the grim professor has the best 
of the argument, as he is certainly more deistically logical, and 
less severe in his arraignment of God than his critic. 

Without going into the question of "the origin of evil," 
which has puzzled theologians from St. Augustine to Sidney 
Brooks, I prefer to believe, with the professor, that "malific 
influences of Saturn and Jupiter" are responsible for famine, 
plague and chimeras dire, rather than ascribe to a merciful 
God, "who is love," the afflictions of humanity. True, "such 
monstrous and universal horrors as he describes I think are a 
dishonor to the Almighty." [Note 1.] It is Mr. Brooks, 
however, who must bear the terrible onus of dishonoring the 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 49 

Almighty, for my friend Grimmer expressly assigns the horrors 
to Saturn and Jupiter (heathen gods) and the blessed relief to 
the Almighty (the Christian God) . 

Does it not strike Mr. Brooks that, even should the calami- 
ties predicted by the astrologer fall upon the earth, God would 
only be permitting in a short time the miseries he allows eter- 
nally to be spread over greater spaces of time ? It is a ques- 
tion simply of degree and not of kind. The God who would 
tolerate a little plague or provide for the destruction of a fish- 
ing crew on the banks, would be quite as glorious, lovable and 
consistent in obliterating all human kind in a week, amid such 
suffering and consternation as the Dantean Inferno itself cannot 
parallel. [Note 2.] 

Mr. Brooks is evidently a gentleman most devotedly attached 
to the Ultra-Orthodox doctrine, and I should judge from his 
confessed ignorance concerning the end of the world, quite sat- 
isfied that God made the earth in six days, that Adam and 
Eve were the first human beings, and that it happened six 
thousand years ago. Allow me to inform our friend that the 
biography of this globe, its birth, life, death and final destina- 
tion, is as certainly known as that of Napoleon Bonaparte or 
General George Washington, of blessed memory. [Note 3.] 

On this, and the other topics touched by Mr. Brooks, such as 
"wholesale slaughters of mankind," and the "way God has 
worked in times past," I shall be pleased some time to en- 
lighten our good friend Mr. B. The best authorities on the 
Orthodox side are the "Port Royal Letters," whose only fault 
is that the eminent writer died in 1662 instead of living in 1880, 
for the mind which gave birth to protoplasm would not have 
been to-day turned into the channel of bigotry. 

Between Grimmer and his critic, it is a toss, on the White- 
chapel plan, "heads I win, tails you lose ;" for if the howling 
tornado of death, which the professor predicts, does strike us, 
God will have as little to do with it as Saturn and Jupiter. 
[Note 4.] 

Mr. Brooks feels "safe in trusting to God." Let me cite for 
his emulation the case of the good old Scotch woman, who 
being advised to trust in Providence and cross the stormy Forth 



50 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

in a boat, replied, "Na, na, I'll na trust i' Providence, as lang 
there's a bridge i' Stirling." 

Nothing is plainer in the Bible than that there is nothing 
plain in the book. There's not a heresy, theory, dogma, creed, 
proposition or tenet, however monstrous, however cruel, how- 
ever pernicious, however childish, silly and absurd, that may 
not be substantiated or refuted, driven home or kicked out of 
doors, by reference to that marvellous compilation. [Note 5.] 
And the only fault Mr. Brooks can justly find with my friend 
Grimmer is that the prophecy includes Saturn and not God, 
and is sparsely interspersed with holy texts and Biblical quota- 
tions. Magus Bickerstaff. 



OUR REVIEW OF MR. BICKERSTAFF. 



[Note 1.] Mr. Bickerstaff has evidently made investiga- 
tions beyond Mr. Brooks ; but still he has not advanced far 
enough to get clear of the meshes of the devil, and hence is 
bound by Satan in unbelief, for how many years we know not. 
He does not seem inclined to meddle with "the origin of evil," 
which has puzzled so many theologians, but still he assumes to 
be in possession of a knowledge of God, and dashes into his 
subject with a recklessness which betrays ignorance of the 
ground upon which he treads. If he could once get a clear 
view of the "origin of evil," it would wonderfully change his 
mind in regard to the character of God ; and then he could ad- 
mit that the "howling tornado of death" might "strike." When 
a man talks of an Almighty God of love being dishonored by 
the work of his own hands, however flippant his style of ex- 
pression may be, he must expect to be looked upon as a novice 
by all intelligent, consistent persons. If God is Almighty, there 
is no being or power in the universe to perpetrate "such mon- 
strous and universal horrors," but himself. He either is not 
Almighty, or he is responsible for the work. If Mr. Bicker- 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 51 

staff will hold fast to the belief that God is an Almighty being, 
he will soon find out where to look for the origin of evil. But 
this will lead him back to the good old Bible, of which he 
thinks there is nothing plainer, than that there is nothing plain 
in the book. Mr. Bickerstaff 's Almighty God says : "I form 
the light and create darkness ; I make peace and create evil : I 
the Lord do all these things. " (Isa. xlv : 7.) "I am God, 
and there is none like me, declaring the end from the begin- 
ning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, 
saying, "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleas- 
ure." (Isa. xlvi: 9, 10.) 

This is the Almighty God of love, the Supreme Ruler of the 
universe ; too wise to err, too good to do, or suffer anything to 
be done, that will not result in good, and with power to do all 
his pleasure. 

[Note 2.] We think the first part of this paragraph must 
"strike Mr. Brooks," we hope hard enough to shiver to atoms 
his doctrine of eternal torment, if he holds that God dishonor- 
ing doctrine, which we (as well as Mr. Bickerstaff) suppose 
from his article that he does. But the pertness with which 
Mr. Bickerstaff compares "the God who would tolerate a little 
plague," with Dante's Inferno (Hell), shows rashness without 
judgment. If Omniscient Wisdom sees fit to "tolerate a little 
plague," to produce a greater good, and his omnipotent power 
is able to accomplish the purpose, it is the height of presump- 
tion, it is audacity, even, for puny, finite man to equal it to the 
act of "obliterating all human kind in a week, amid such suf- 
fering and consternation as the Dantean Inferno itself cannot 
parallel." 

The writer here assumes the office of judge, to decide upon 
the actions of an Almighty God. What folly ! It may be ig- 
norance ; but if not ignorance, it is most certainly blasphemy. 

Immutable laws cannot be changed ; because they are like 
their Creator, unchangeable. Causes produce their legitimate 
results ; and nothing else in God's universe is, has been, or can 
be done, but just what is the result of existing causes. All re- 
sults, when produced, become causes ; and so the vast network 
of machinery moves on ; all things working together for good. 



-52 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

But the Almighty God — the great Ruling Power over all, by 
b>oth good and evil agents, including Christ and the devil, by 
pain and pleasure, by suffering and rejoicing — is "working all 
things after the counsel of his own will" (Eph. i : 11), as he 
declared to his servants the prophets, "Saying, My counsel 
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure." (Isa. xlvi : 10.) 

This includes the influence and motion of all planets, comets 
.and heavenly bodies, as well as all other existing things, or 
things that may be brought into existence as the result of what- 
ever now exists, through the fixed and immutable laws that 
govern them ; and not a meteoric stone, nor a sparrow, can 
fall to the ground, without the notice of the Almighty God, 
nor outside of his fixed laws, or without being the result of 
causes. 

When Mr. Bickerstaff can understand what an Almighty 
God of love is, and the working of his immutable laws, he will 
never entangle himself in such a net-work of inconsistencies as 
he has in this short article, nor reject the natural effect of the 
motion of the planets in their elliptical orbits around the sun, 
coming nearer to that central orb at one point in their circuit 
than at any other point, and thus increasing the attraction of 
gravitation, in proportion as the squares of the distance between 
the sun and the several planets at their perihelion passages de- 
creases, which produces a malific influence upon our earth, in 
harmony with Professor Grimmer's main theory. 

[Note 3.] The end of the world referred to in this para- 
graph we have no faith in, because it is not supported by evi- 
dence from the Scriptures nor from science. It is supposed 
by many, and probably Mr. Bickerstaff is among the num- 
ber, that the Bible teaches the end of the world ; but it is 
a mistake. The Greek word aioon is sometimes rendered 
world in the New Testament, when it should have been ren- 
dered age, giving the idea of the end of the age, instead of the 
end of the world. Correct the rendering of this word, and 
nothing can be found in the Bible to support that false theory. 
And as we see no reason to suppose there is anything in na- 
ture's laws which teaches the end of this mundane system, we 
discard the idea wholly. 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 53 

But we conclude Mr. Bickerstaff does believe in the end of 
the world. What else can he mean by the death of this globe ? 
Does he grasp that error in the Bible and reject all the truth? 
He should prove all things, and hold fast to that which is good 
and true. But it is wonderful that he has the biography of the 
birth, life, death, and final destination of this globe, and still 
does not understand the effect of the perihelia of the planets. 
Another decade, perhaps, will open his eyes to that also. 

[Note 4.] If Professor Grimmer's predictions prove true, 
this critic claims that "God will have as little to do with it as 
Saturn and Jupiter." This is a singular statement for one who 
claims to possess a knowledge of the biography of this globe, 
from its birth to its final destination. If the dreadful scourge 
comes, the question is, What will cause it? But if it should, 
where shall we look for the cause ? If the planets are not the 
cause, and if an Almighty God is not the cause, who or what 
will be the cause ? Let him answer. 

[Note 5.] Assertions are easily made. We challenge the 
gentleman to make his wordy statement good in a friendly de- 
bate upon the platform or through the press. 

We have not answered Mr. Bickerstaff so critically as we 
designed ; but time fails, and we must drop the matter for the 
present. We hope, however, that u when the Lord brings 
again Zion," as he most surely will, that we with Messrs. 
Brooks and Bickerstaff may be found among the number who 
will see eye to eye. 



CHAPTER VII. 



CONTINUATION OF THE TILT BETWEEN MESSRS. BROOKS AND 
BICKERSTAFF IN WHICH ASTROLOGY IS PRACTICALLY NEG- 
LECTED LETTER FROM SIDNEY BROOKS. 



The simple act of putting on paper a few thoughts on Pro- 
fessor Grimmer's predictions — for no other eye than that of the 
person who showed them to the writer — has resulted in bring- 
ing his name into a newspaper and drawing forth a review 
from Magus Bickerstaff. 

As it was the sole aim of the writer to show that those pre- 
dictions were entitled to no confidence, either on scientific 
grounds or any other, it is remarkable that this member of the 
Magi fraternity does not offer a single argument in their favor ; 
and as he perfectly agrees with me in the main proposition, 
namely, that such ghastly and incurable plagues, such poison- 
ing of the wholesome agencies of nature and derangement of 
her laws, such a letting loose of human passions in wars and 
bloodshed, as will prevail for seven years over the whole earth, 
would be a dishonor to the Almighty, — this reply, so far as it 



56 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

relates to Professor Grimmer and his predictions, is un- 
necessary. 

A few thoughts on Bickerstaff and his reflections seem to be 
called for. His most conspicuous trait is that which is com- 
mon to all writers of his class — marvellous self-complacency. 
He takes it for granted that all persons who believe in the 
Bible as the word of God are ignorant of natural science. He 
kindly offers to inform "our friend" on points upon which the 
most eminent scientists are by no means, agreed ; and gra- 
ciously proposes, some day, to "enlighten him" on those tough 
questions in theology that have perplexed great minds in all 
ages. 

In the second place, we perceive that the reviewer holds to 
the idea that science and the sacred Scriptures are at war with 
each other. Because his friend is a believer in the Orthodox 
religion, he presumes he is "satisfied that God made the earth 
in six days and the work of creation began about six thousand 
years ago." If he had gone a little further and presumed, for 
the same reason, that his friend believed that the earth was 
flat and stationary, it would have been quite as logical and just. 
The harmony between science and the Scriptures, rationally 
interpreted, is so well established at the present day that we 
cannot assign to the front rank among scientific men those who 
maintain the opposite opinion. 

Again — as to the man who offers to enlighten me on impor- 
tant points, when we read his cool and deliberate denunciations 
of the Bible as a standard of truthfulness and morality in its 
teachings, it is too little to say of one who holds such an esti- 
mate of the Book near the close of the Nineteenth century, that 
either his information or his judgment is at fault. We are 
compelled to rank him with another Magus, whom the Apostle 
Paul denounced, as related in the Book of Acts, whose first 
name was Simon. s. b. 



MAGUS BICKERSTAFF S REJOINDER. 



I, Magus Bickerstaff, most humble member of the noble 
fraternity of Illuminati, confess myself more surprised in the 
short experience I have had with a Cambridge sophist, than I 
was in the whole course of my study of the Mysteries of Co- 
mma and the Arcana of Terophinium. 

Mr. Sidney Brooks, a most respectable and worthy gentle- 
man, I have no doubt, assailed the Brotherhood of Astrologers, 
in attacking my friend and colleague, Professor Grimmer, and 
his predictions, founded on the pure deductions of Almansur ; 
and undertook to transfer to Jehovah the responsibility resting 
on other powers for their malific influences, and the terrible re- 
sults foreshadowed to mankind. I penned a calm reply. To 
this Mr. B. comes forward with "A few (and he might have 
added 'feeble,') thoughts on Bickerstaff," in which he follows 
the old precept of abusing the attorney for the other side, and 
making contemptuous allusions to the ancient and honorable 
name I bear. It is not without the pale of my invention to 
have made use of the gentleman's Patronymic, to suggest such 
characteristic qualifications as "turgid," "riled" and "shal- 
low." But I leave the grosser attributes of disputation to him, 
and insist on the cogency of my former arguments, and reit- 
erate my desire to have astrological responsibility rest where it 
belongs. 

Long before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, to beget a 
race of Egyptian serfs and recipients of the least intelligible of 
Egyptian traditions, and finally to produce a Messiah of that 
polluted current of god-lore, Man had learned to read in the 



58 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

stars the dictates of Superior Government. The early Chal- 
dean thinkers traced the connection between Conjunctions and 
disaster, and Oppositions and tranquillity. The pages of his- 
tory are cumbered with demonstrations of the absolute fidelity 
of astrological predictions. Even the "hind-sight" prophecies 
of the much-vaunted Christian Bible are vain babblings and 
restricted descriptions, when compared with numberless genu- 
ine presagings, of vast import and unerring accomplishment, 
which have been declared of old by Masters of our infallible 
"logos." And now, if Professor Grimmer's calculations as to 
planetary ascendancy and helosteilic conjunction are correct 
(the which I will neither affirm nor deny) , the woes he pre- 
dicts to the world will surely, and in the set time, come to 
pass. 

I do not think that "all persons who believe in the Bible as 
the word of God are ignorant of natural sciences." But I do 
hold that the man, who blindly and implicitly believes in every 
literal thing the Bible says, is a fool ; and that the man, who 
pretends to believe in the Bible, and still scouts astrology, magic 
and witch-craft, is inconsistent or hypocritical. In "natural 
science" who were the Pioneers, the Masters and Guides of a 
superstitious and priest-ridden world? Who, but the Astrolo- 
gers, the Alchemists, the Sages and Magi? Who, but these 
great fragments of universal mind made the civilization of to- 
day possible ? 

Friend Brooks, you know less, I am afraid, of Astrology, 
than of word-chopping, or of "the Book of Acts, whose first 
name was Simon" ; and have taken the ipse dixit of prejudiced 
and ignorant men as to its scope and achievements. I still in- 
sist that I shall be glad to enlighten you as well on the sublime 
principles of the science of the eternal stars as on the minor 
point of world-construction and world-destruction. Take what 
view of my self-complacency you will, I am not yet vain or 
presumptuous enough to say what God Almighty will do, or 
not do ; thinks, permits or denies. I only profess to deal with 
natural forces — in sight, and only mysterious or impossible to 
the superstitious and bigoted. You tell us what God allows ; 
measure the substance of his existence ; and discover that some 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 59 

things would honor the source of honor and perfection, or dis- 
honor that which, by the very allowance of being, could not be 
dishonored either from within or without. 

I said that the God who would permit a little plague or pro- 
vide for the destruction of a single crew on the fishing-banks 
would be as merciful, as just, as lovable in sweeping off all 
the human race in a week, amid such horrors as the Dan- 
tean Inferno could not parallel. It is a question merely of de- 
gree and not of kind. And there was no necessity for you to 
lose your temper thereupon. Neither Sidney Brooks nor the 
Apostle Paul can controvert such an axiomatic statement. 

The difficulty is that Mr. Brooks has done a "simple act" in 
putting his crude thoughts, hide-bound and dogmatic, into 
print ; and a much simpler one in leaving the pleasant shades 
of argument for the heated plain of vituperation. Brooks 
should be cool, and not too fast, to fish in or muse beside. 

261 Cambridge street, Dec. 21, 1880. 



CHAPTER Yin. 



A MIRACLE IN STONE PROPHECY AND THE GREAT PYRAMID 

REV. DR. SEISS, THE EMINENT BIBLICAL SCHOLAR, AND 

HIS CONCLUSIONS. 



The above title is given to a work on the Great Pyramid of 
Egypt, by Joseph A. Seiss, D. D., pastor of the "Church of 
the Holy Communion" in Philadelphia. Dr. Seiss is an emi- 
nent scholar and a popular writer. As a profound thinker his 
conclusions are entitled to respectful attention. The book is 
meant to give a succinct, comprehensive account of the oldest 
and greatest existing monument of intellectual man, particu- 
larly of the recent discoveries and claims with regard to it. 
Dr. Seiss arrives at the conclusion that it would verily seem as 
if it were about to prove itself a sort of key to the universe, — a 
symbol of the profoundest truths of science, of religion, and of 
all the past and future history of man. Whether the theories 
which have been arrived at by eminent divines and by some of 
the most thorough Egyptologists are correct or not, it is im- 
portant to examine the views of all who are engaged in investi- 
gations in regard to the Egyptians and the records of their 



62 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

monuments. It is too early to say, as the recent investigations 
and theories have not yet been sufficiently discussed, whether 
the Great Pyramid was intended for a tomb, or a monument, 
typical in itself, and containing materials intended to convey 
revelations to mankind, or to those who were to be initiated 
into the mysteries of the religion and philosophy of the Egyp- 
tians ; or, if the last-named purpose was the one for which it 
was constructed, whether the modern interpretations of its les- 
sons are correct, or, yet again, whether the architects of this 
great work "builded better than they knew." Whatever con- 
clusions may be arrived at, it is interesting to read the views 
of those who have devoted time to the consideration of the sub- 
ject. The ' 'Miracle in Stone" is illustrated with a chart, show- 
ing the elevation of the pyramid cut in half, from north to 
south, in order to give a view of the interior, with its measure- 
ments, which are all supposed to illustrate some events in the 
history of man and of his relations to eternity. According to 
Dr. Seiss the original name of the structure was pyr-met, the 
signification of which is "the division of ten," and curious de- 
ductions are drawn in conformity with this theory in regard to 
the measurements and construction of the pyramid. The only 
article of furniture in all the Great Pyramid is a coffer in the 
king's chamber — found by the earliest modern investigators to 
be a lidless, empty box, cut from a solid block of red granite, 
and polished within and without. 

Its proportions are geometrical. Its sides and bottom are 
cubically identical ; the length of its two sides to its height is 
as a circle to its diameter ; its exterior volume is just twice the 
dimensions of its bottom ; and its whole measure is just the fif- 
tieth part of the size of the chamber in which it stands. Its 
internal measure is just four times the measure of an English 
"quarter" of wheat. By its contents measure it also confirms 
Sir Isaac Newton's determination of the length of the sacred 
cubit. We wish to give an illustration of the theory adopted 
by Dr. Seiss and others who agree with him. He says : "The 
Christian dispensation has a fixed limit. It is to terminate 
with the coming again of the Lord Jesus to judge the quick 
and the dead. And that coming of Christ to end this age is 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 63 

everywhere presented as impending, — a theory which might 
occur any day. This is symbolized in the Great Pyramid. 
Its termination is as distinctly marked as its beginning, and 
even the impendingness of the end is not overlooked. Its south 
or further wall overhangs its base as if it might fall at any mo- 
ment. From my studies of the Apocalypse, I was led to pub- 
lish years ago my firm belief that the present Church period is 
to be succeeded by a dispensation of judgment, and this is most 
evidently symbolized next after the end of the grand gallery. 
There the passage becomes low again, for the Church as such 
has ended its career. There the 'granite leaf — a great frown- 
ing double stone — hangs in its grooves, beneath which every 
one that passes must bow, exhibiting an impressive picture of 
the 'great tribulation' of the great judgment period." 

The pyramid is also supposed to contain symbolic prophecies 
of the great activity which took place at the commencement of 
the present century, as shown by the establishment of great 
missionary organizations. One of the oldest and most univer- 
sal of the ancient constellations is the Dragon. The chief star 
embraced in that group is a Draconis ; to that star the entrance 
of the Great Pyramid was levelled, so that a Draconis at its 
lower culmination then looked right down that inclined tube to 
the bottomless pit. 

The first ascending passage begins at a point which answers 
in the number of inches to the date of the exodus of Israel. It 
also covers by its length the precise number of inches that there 
were years from the exodus to the birth of Christ. 



THE PYRAMID AND THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 



The Bible tells of a nearing day of judgment, — a time when 
the Almighty Power, that made us, will reckon with us con- 
cerning these earthly lives of ours, and deal out destiny accord- 



64 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

ing to the uses we have made of them, — when the principles of 
eternal justice must go into full effect, when the trampled law 
will inexorably enforce its supreme sway. It is described as a 
time of sorrow and unexampled distress for the unbelieving 
world, — a time of fears and plagues and great tribulation to ajl 
but God's watching and ready ones, to whom it shall be a day 
of glorious coronation in heaven. Its coming is spoken of as 
sudden, — when men in general do not expect it, — when many 
are saying "Peace and safety." Like the flood upon the old 
world, — like the tempest of hail and fire which overwhelmed 
Sodom and Gomorrah, — so shall it come upon the nations. 
When men think not, the Son of Man cometh. And all this, 
too, is solemnly pronounced by the Great Pyramid. That 
grand gallery stops abruptly. It is suddenly cut off in its con- 
tinuity ; from a splendid passage-way, twenty-eight feet in 
height, it ceases instantly, and the further passage is less than 
four feet. The floor line then no longer ascends. A ponder- 
ous double block of frowning granite, hard and invincible, 
hangs loose over the low and narrow pass now. In the same 
ante-chamber in which it hangs, the rules, measures and 
weights appear engraven in majesty upon the imperishable 
granite, for every one to pass under. The tokens are that now 
judgment is laid to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, 
that every cover may be lifted, and every refuge of lies swept 
away. Everything here indicates the inexorable adjudications 
of eternal righteousness. 

And that solemn time is everywhere represented as close at 
hand. As far as theologians have been able to ascertain, all 
the prophetic dates are about run out. The Scriptural signs 
of the end have appeared. Every method of computation points 
to the solemn conclusion that we are now on the margin of the 
end of this age and dispensation. Nor does the Great Pyramid 
fail to tell us the same thing. 

Measuring off one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven 
inches for the beginning of the grand gallery, there remains but 
few inches left to bring us to its end. So, likewise, the astro- 
nomical indications are correspondingly remarkable. The Ple- 
iades which were on the meridian when the pyramid was built 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 65 

are then far to the east, with the vernal equinox at the same 
time precisely the same distance from that meridian to the 
west, while the distance from one to the other measures the 
exact age of the pyramid at that date. At the same time a 
Draconis will again be on the meridian below the pole, but then 
just seven times lower than at the time of the pyramid's build- 
ing. This final downwardness of seven times is strikingly sug- 
gestive of the Dragon's complete dethronement. And what is 
still more remarkable, whilst a Draconis is on the meridian at 
this low point, Aries, the Ram, appears on the meridian above, 
with the line passing exactly through his horns ! A more vivid 
astronomical sign of the overthrow of Satan, under the domin- 
ion of the Prince of the Flock of God, is not possible to con- 
ceive. It is as if the very heavens were proclaiming that the 
ever-living Lamb takes to himself his great power, and enters 
upon his glorious reign. The construction of the pyramid is 
also supposed to be typical of the restoration of the Jews, to 
give suggestions in regard to heaven, the spiritual universe, 
and various other matters which we have not space to consider 
in this article. The book concludes with the "Use of the Pyra- 
mid Respecting Faith," in which it is stated that "the pyramid 
is not a substitute for our glorious Bible, nor a thing to be put 
on an equality with the Scriptures." 



CHAPTER IX. 



WHAT SOME LEADING PAPERS SAY — THE HEAVENS SHOW A 
SIGN — A GREAT PERIOD COMMENCED. 



The New York Tribune, in a recent number, speaking on 
Astrology, says : 

It was for a long time pretty generally understood by people 
who put their trust in Mother Shipton that our planet would 
become a total wreck at some period during the year upon 
which we have so prosperously entered. Now the rolling up 
of the heavens like a scroll, the general liquefaction of matter 
under fervent heat, and the disorganization of the universe into 
a "wilderness of tempestuous combustion/' is not an event 
which the mass of mankind would be likely to contemplate with 
serenity, provided it was set down for a date certain and near 
at hand, say Saturday week. According to the theory of the 
universe proposed by Boscovich, there may be, it is true, no 
ultimate chaos and conflagration, but in their stead a quiet and 
sudden vanishing of worlds. If matter, as the ingenious Ital- 
ian holds, does not consist of hard atoms, but is only a mode 
or a combination of modes of motion — a congeries of mathe- 



€8 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

matical centres of attraction and repulsion — the visible and pal- 
pable universe is only a constant and uniform emanation of 
creative energy which may cease instantaneously, for it is quite 
as easy to conceive of the withdrawal of this energy as of its 
continued exercise by a Supreme Will. The end of all things, 
therefore, may be u not a destruction, but a rest; not a crash 
and ruin, but a pause.'" But granting the correctness of this 
hypothesis, an instantaneous vanishing into nothingness is not 
to be contemplated without emotion by persons of regular hab- 
its, for this would quite as seriously disturb ordinary business 
as would the passing away of the heavens with a great noise. 
Upon the whole, then, devout believers in the old lady are jus- 
tified in taking comfort in the abundantly established fact that 
the famous prophecy, u To an end the world will come In 
eighteen hundred and eighty-one," was never uttered by Mother 
Ship ton, but is an impious forgery which nowhere appears in 
the textus receptus of her forebodings. 

And yet there are persons quite as familiar with the future 
as Mother Shipton, and quite as competent to unroll the vol- 
ume of destiny, who assert that during this fatal year the skies 
will be all ablaze with portents of evil. The Almanac of Zad- 
kiel Tao Sze and the Prophetic Messenger of Raphael for 
1881 are both works by recognized authorities in astrological 
science. Their prophecies, it is true, traverse each other in 
minor details, as, for instance, when a certain aspect of the 
heavens is interpreted by one to foretell a prevalent and suffo- 
cating disease of the human windpipe, and by the other to sig- 
nify a devastating tidal wave ; but they agree in predicting that 
a great many unpleasant things will come to pass. The most 
mischievous planetary influence will come from the conjunction 
of Saturn and Jupiter. This event is set down by the astrolo- 
gers for April 18, which happens to be four days ahead of time* 
and it is to be hoped that this error will vitiate some of their 
calculations. It takes place in Taurus, near the cusp of the 
9th house. Now Taurus is a beastly and unhealthy sign, and 
Raphael is probably correct when he states that horned cattle 
will be afflicted with murrain before mankind is wasted by the 
plague. No one will have the hardihood to question Zadkiel's 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 69 

assertion that "the Bull rules Ireland," and therefore he holds 
that this conjunction in Taurus presignifies sedition and rioting 
in that island. But Taurus rules Asia Minor as well, and it 
is to be noted that the last great conjunction in this sign, which 
happened in 1146, was followed by the bloodiest of the crusades 
and a violent brandishing of the shillelah. But this conjunc- 
tion is only one of the threatening aspects of the skies. It will 
be quickly followed by the conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune ; 
then Mars will join Neptune, and soon after Jupiter and Mars 
will meet. All these conjunctions will take place in Taurus 
and presage woes untold. Besides this the four great planets 
are rapidly approaching their perihelia, and before the earth 
recovers from the baneful effects of one, another will be ab- 
stracting the vital principles from our atmosphere. These 
nearly coincident perihelia have not occurred since the four- 
teenth century, when the Black Death swept over Europe, cul- 
minating in the London plague. 

Terrible as will be the results of the intense planetary activ- 
ity in the times next ensuing, Zadkiel comforts the world by 
the assurance that a foreknowledge of these perils will greatly 
mitigate them, as, for instance, the prudent will remain on 
shore during the days when shipwrecks are foretold, and they 
will check the advance of Asiatic cholera by prophylactic doses 
of spirits of camphor. Raphael's forecast is more gloomy. In 
his opinion, the afflictions which will begin in February prox- 
imo will accumulate in number and severity as the planets- 
sweep nearer to the sun, until the world blows up like a steam 
boiler, possibly in the spring of 1887. A few of the woes to 
come, picked at random from these cheerful prophecies, are 
added as a stimulant to the " swearing off" industry, which 
usually passes through a period of depression immediately after 
the first day of the year : Blight, mildew, unkind seasons, in- 
surrection, sunstrokes, brain-fevers, strikes of railroad em- 
ployees, the war fiend let loose, robberies, crimes of violence, 
agitation in the Stock Exchange, uprising of islands and the 
subsidence of continents, the insanity of three distinguished 
women, confiscation, tornadoes, want, famine, colliery explo- 
sions, meteors, lightning, volcanic eruptions, plagues, a driving 



70 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

storm of balls of fire, increased business in the divorce courts, 
separation of Church from State, atheism, wife-beating, the air 
impure and motionless, the sun lurid and obscure, birds re- 
fraining from song, beasts groaning with anguish, and a feeling 
of dread and dismay among the inhabitants of the earth. These 
are samples of a full line of afflictions in assorted sizes which 
the prophets have in stock to suit every demand. 

The staid and steady Intelligencer, a leading Presbyterian 
organ, of New York city, stated a few weeks since : 

The earth is apparently responding to the vast commotions 
within and upon Jupiter and the sun. Two magnetic storms, 
one of great waves, have swept around the world ; atmospheric 
storms have increased, and the staunchest steamers have been 
delayed and somewhat severely tried ; the internal fires of the 
^arth are aroused to unwonted activity. Vesuvius is in erup- 
tion, iEtna is throbbing and trembling, Mauna Loa is pouring 
out rivers of lava ; a district at Agram, Croatia, from sixty 
to eighty miles in diameter, is shaken by earthquake, casting 
down over two hundred buildings, and mud volcanoes are 
thrown up ; the north shore of Scotland and Ireland has also 
been shaken ; and Mount Baker, in Washington Territory, is 
giving signs of renewed activity. The theory of the sun spot 
period is apparently receiving confirmation. The maximum of 
sun spots it is supposed will be reached in 1882, and until then 
these commotions may increase. These disturbances, calamit- 
ous as they may be to certain localities, are nothing new, have 
occurred probably at regular intervals heretofore. Professor 
Draper reports that his examination of such records as her has 
access to show a great cycle of about sixty years, including the 
smaller cycles of about eleven or twelve years. It is not im- 
probable that further research will Hx. the great cycle at rather 
over than under seventy years, when something like the present 
planetary conditions coincided with a sun spot period. It is 
not unlikely that the earth will be considerably disturbed during 
1881-82. But this is largely conjectural. Observations this 
year and next year may decidedly modify the theory. 

Astronomers just now are somewhat at fault in regard to 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 71 

some very interesting calculations. It has been supposed for 
some time that the perturbations of Uranus and Neptune on 
their orbits, and those of comets travelling outside of Uranus, 
were caused by one or more ultra-Neptunian planets. Profes- 
sor G. Forbes, by reckoning the aphelia of certain periodic 
comets, inferred the existence of two extra-Neptunian planets, 
and has indicated their approximate positions. Mr. D. P. 
Todd, from the perturbation of Uranus, has reckoned one such 
planet closely agreeing with one of the results reached by Pro- 
fessor Forbes. A search of the locality indicated has been 
made with the great Washington refractor, but in vain. The 
issue is rather a disappointment. 

The result of the spectroscopic examinations of nebulae is 
giving rise to some talk. Many of the nebulae give only three 
lines, — one of hydrogen, one of nitrogen, and another of some 
unknown vapor. Now, unless it can be proved that all known 
substances can be resolved into hydrogen, nitrogen, and the un- 
known gas, the nebular hypothesis will be seriously imperilled. 
So the matter stands at present. More powerful and better 
spectroscopes may give hereafter other results, but just now 
the evidence is rather unfavorable to the nebular theory. 

Astronomers are glancing occasionally at Cassiopeia to see 
whether the famous temporary star, which has blazed out ap- 
parently through some vast conflagration at three previous peri- 
ods, will again exhibit a similar phenomenon. It appeared in 
945, in 1264, and in 1572. At the last outburst it became 
suddenly brighter than Jupiter, was visible to the keen-sighted 
at noon, and at night penetrated, by its radiance, thick clouds 
which hid every other star. The recorded periods of appear- 
ance have been at intervals of 319 and 308 years, so that there 
is a probability of a fresh blazing out during the present decade. 
This star in 1572 passed also through interesting changes of 
color, and disappeared at the end of seventeen months. 

THE END OF THE WORLD PREDICTED. 

The Washington Post published an article Jan. 17, 1881, 
of which the following is a synopsis : 

A startling prediction has recently been made that there was 



72 THE COMING CATASTROPHE, 

great danger of the world's coming to an end sometime during 
this year. It was stated that there is at present in the universe 
a body, of almost inconceivable density, which is going directly 
toward the sun. Sometime during this year, the prediction al- 
leged, this mass would fall into the sun, and the immense heat 
suddenly generated thereby would destroy all the higher forms 
of life on the earth. It was very soberly stated that the people 
at the poles, although the temperature there would be greatly 
increased, might possibly survive this terrible heat, and thus 
repeople the earth. • 

In order to obtain some light on this question, a Post re- 
porter has been obtaining the views of the Government astrono- 
mers on the subject. The Naval Observatory was the first 
place visited. Professor Hall, though able to discover Mars' 
satellites, has not yet found the comet which is to play such an 
important part in the destruction of the world. "It is the first 
time I have been made aware of the impending danger," he 
said. 

"But can there be any foundation for such a prediction?" 

"Only in this, that I have seen somewhere a statement that 
the comet of 1812 was to return about this time ; but the 
likelihood that it will fall into the sun or strike the earth, 
even if it did return, is infinitessimal. There is just about one 
chance in millions and millions that the earth will ever be 
struck by a comet." 

"And if it did?" 

"In my opinion, no one need fear the consequences in the 
least." 

"Then you are not concerned about this prediction?" 

"Not much. I do not care even to speculate about it, for 
there are many matters of far more value to which my time 
can be better devoted." 

Professor Eastman was found in his room busily at work. 
He laughed as he read the article which the reporter showed 
him. "I don't know anything about it," he said, as he laid it 
on his desk. "You see there are periodic waves of speculation 
among amateur astronomers, and I suppose this is the latest. 
These gentlemen speculate ingeniously, and people always read 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 73 

that sort of matter without once endeavoring to ascertain the 
real facts in the case. For instance, there is an apparently 
well authenticated tradition that Tycho Brahe, an early astron- 
omer, predicted that this year would be one of great sickness, 
and several other terrible things, because four planets — Venus, 
Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune — would be in conjunction. " 

"Is that not so?" 

The Professor laughed more heartily than ever. "Of course 
not," he said. "The planets do not come into conjunction this 
year at all. In addition to this, Neptune was not discovered 
until Tycho Brahe had been dead about 300 years, and he 
could not, therefore, have predicted its conjunction with any- 
thing. My idea is that this article, if it did not originate alto- 
gether in some imaginative brain, was based on a statement re- 
garding Swift's comet." 

"What was that?" 

"That it was moving directly toward the earth. Three 
comets have been discovered recently, one of which was Swift's. 
It was announced from the first that two of the comets were 
moving in an orbit which would never come near the earth, but 
Swift states that he could detect no motion in his comet, 
and he reasoned therefore that it was moving directly toward 
the earth. Had his observations been correct his conclusions 
would have been justifiable. "When, however, we looked at it 
through our glass we detected a very rapid motion visible, even 
without the aid of the measurements ordinarily used. Profes- 
sor Frisby, who has been making a study of the orbit of Swift's 
comet, finds that it has a period of about five and a half years, 
so there is no danger of it striking the earth or falling into the 
sun. If there is any other comet coming I do not know it." 

Professor Harkness was also busy with some astronomical 
tables, but took time carefully to read over the article. "What 
do you think of it?" asked the reporter. 

"I can dispose of it in three sentences. In the first place 
there is no evidence that any comet is about to fall into the sun. 
Secondly, if a comet did fall into the sun it is not likely that it 
would increase the heat of that body sufficiently to cause seri- 
ous damage to the earth. And lastly, physicists do not be- 



74 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

lieve, as the article states, that the falling of meteorites into the 
sun is the principal source of its heat. So far as is now known 
the only adequate source seems to be the shrinking of the sun's 
diameter, produced by the action of its own gravity. I think 
that articles of that kind," he continued, pointing to the ex- 
tract, "are not worth a moment's consideration, except to ex- 
pose their very absurdity." 

Professor Newcomb, who was found at his house, did not 
see why people should get interested in such "unmitigated non- 
sense." "But they do get interested, for the other morning I 
found on my desk a letter from a gentleman who had read this 
article, and who wanted to know whether it was true. I guess 
you might as well tell your readers what I told him — that he 
ought to know better than to trouble himself about a matter 
which on its very face is nonsensical and absurd." 



THE YEAR 1881. 

1881 is a peculiar number. The sum of its digits is 9x9. It 
is divisible by 9 without remainder. The remaining quotient 
consists of the prime factors, 11 and 19. It reads the same 
both ways. If 18 be set under 81 and the two added the sum 
is 99. If the 18 be reversed and then added to 81, the sum is 
162, the sum of the digits of which is 9. The 162 is also di- 
visible by 9, giving a quotient divisible by 9. If the 81 be re- 
versed and added to 18, the sum is 36, which is also divisible 
by 9 , and the sum of its digits is also 9 . 

But what of it ? 

Add the following considerations before you press an answer : 
1. Those who have cultivated the occult sciences have always 
held the number 9 to be possessed of great significance. 2. 
Those who have made a study of the numerical symbolism of 
the Scriptures have regarded the number 9 as equally signifi- 
cant. "It is a number of finality or judgment, or creaturely 
completeness," says Dr. Mahan. And he adds, "it is a factor 
of all the great dates of judgment, viz. : of the Flood, the de- 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 75 

struction of Sodom, the overthrow of Pharaoh, the Captivity, 
and the destruction of Jerusalem." As we have seen, it enters 
in a variety of ways into the number 1881. What of it now? 
Has 1881 a judgment in store for the human race? and what 
is it? 



CHAPTER X. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END JANUARY, 1881, USHERS IN 

TE3IPESTS ON SEA AND LAND, AND IN THE AFFAIRS OF 

MEN. 



On the very threshold of the year that is to inaugurate the 
brief but overwhelmingly disastrous era of 1881 — 1887, the 
horrois so tremblingly foretold are coming to pass. The bell 
that rang the old year out and the hew year in, gave signal to 
the sinister events grouping about the lives of men and the 
governance of earth. Already the mutterings of the storm are 
heard. Already are the malific influences making their effect 
manifest. 

Fears are taking possession of mankind and false prophets 
are arising. The voice of the Wise Men, masters in knowl- 
edge of the destiny of the race and of the orb we inhabit, is 
obscured by the cooings of the skeptics, who pretend superior 
intelligence and indifference ; and who aim to lull the appre- 
hensions of those inclined to listen to wisdom and advice. So- 
called physicists, secure in the fortified places of self-evolved 
theories, affect to treat the prognostications of seers with su- 
preme contempt ; and this condition has been exactly paralleled 



78 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

a dozen times in the history of the world and ©f the attitude of 
the schools and churches to Astrology. 

In the days when belief was strongest in the breasts of men 
persecution was most bitter ; and orthodoxy is notoriously hide- 
bound and ignorant, and holds human wisdom in contempt. 
Now, fire and gallows-tree are no longer elements of theologi- 
cal or didactic discussion, but sneers and ostracism are ; and 
these are orthodoxically bestowed on Astrology, Astrologers 
and Predictions. But even the most pachydermatous supersti- 
tion is not proof against the keen shafts of fact ; nor are sneers 
ein feste berg in which to take refuge against absolute personal 
experience. I hold that the mingled fears, sneers, invocations, 
apprehensions, frippery, and loudly proclaimed incredulity of 
scientific and orthodox Dryasdusts, are part of the testimony 
cited and presaged for this very time. 

The minds of men are strangely exercised. Clothe it as you 
will, in the tropes of ancient prophecy, in the metaphor of mid- 
aeval prevision, or the fanciful expressions of Mother Shipton, 
Richard Brothers, or George Fox, there is something more 
than curious dalliance in the reception given to the idea that 
the period of 1881-1887 is pregnant with strange, new and 
horrible happenings. There is not much importance to be at- 
tached to juggling with numbers, such as the addition or other 
combination of the digits 1,8, 8, 1. True they may be woven 
into strange shapes, but so may 1551, 2112, and, more than 
any, 2772. Such puerile attempts as this, to read effects in 
the mere accidental form of the arbitrary date fixed by man, 
for convenience and without any relation to natural law, are 
the heights of absurdity. They are simply the refuges of ig- 
norance, conceit and misdirected ingenuity. They have no 
more bearing than the paper-maker's name has on the thought 
of him who mars the paper's surface with pen-scratches. 

Still may be traced in this digital juggling the longing for 
foreknowledge, and the consciousness that "something out of 
the usual is going to happen." The mind that bows to a cen- 
ser and reverences a stole, may well find occult threats in an 
anagrammatic date. 

But we proceed from a different base, with a different mo- 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 79 

live, and for a different purpose. We acknowledge the curious 
phases that may be worked out of some years, Anno Domini ; 
but we are as unmoved by coincidence so trivial, as we are 
overwhelmed with the convictions which higher intelligences 
force upon us. There is no doubt that Saturn, Jupiter, Mars 
and Venus are all on the same side of the sun ; that they are 
rapidly approaching conjunction ; that such an occurrence is so 
unusual as to have had but two repetitions in 4,000,000 years ; 
and that less accumulation of disturbing force has marked pe- 
riods of earthly disaster and disturbance. I defy any man, with 
intelligence above an idiot or a brute, to cast his eye to the 
eastern and southern heavens, on any clear night, without an 
intuition that the circling worlds about us are preparing new 
conditions for us. Low down toward the horizon Venus blazes 
with rare and dazzling brilliancy, upward and eastward Jupi- 
ter shines, and in direct line, and at the same space of arc, 
follows Saturn. On the arc, and but just beginning his pro- 
gression, is Mars, fiery and full of evil to mankind when in the 
same House with Jupiter, Mercury and the Earth, as he now 
is. No one living ever before saw this magnificent procession, 
led by Mercury (yet an evening star) , and joined by every plan- 
et to the uttermost one. Probably the last being of our race and 
order will have "gone over to the majority" long ages before 
the conjunction occurs again. 

What sane man can deny to so unusual occurrence, some- 
thing unusual in the affairs of men. If so slight an event as a 
wind blowing up the Thames, or the refusal of the king of 
France to admit fish duty free from Holland, changed the whole 
history of every nation on the face of the globe, how much 
more, in power, extent and impress, will this strange and influ- 
ential natural event change the history, lives and constitutions 
of mankind ! 

But will the disasters presaged in the coming catastrophe 
fall upon the world? Let us see. No sooner does 1881 open 
than absolutely unlooked for evils crop up. In the commercial 
world the Vanderbilt interest and the Gould interest, which had 
long been antagonistic, combine. As long as two vast powers 
are hostile, lesser existences are safe ; but let the enmity change 



80 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

to amity, and the opposition be transformed to an alliance, 
offensive and defensive, and there is but one result, — woe to 
the weak and feeble neighbors. Nay, more than that ; such 
enormous power so concentrated is a menace to the stability of 
the foundations of social order and political government, no 
matter of what nature they may have been. Yet, see ! The 
opening year precipitates the union and amalgamation of inter- 
ests, in whose opposition alone the general community was safe. 
"The rich will oppress the poor." And here is the engine of 
enormous and unprecedented wealth that can most effectually 
grind poverty into the dust. 

u There will come storms and tidal waves that will swamp 
whole cities." So says the Seer ; what says the record? 

In France and England storms of unparalleled violence and 
widespread ravage have been experienced. On the 19th of 
January the tide rose in the Thames to a height never before 
known. The water invaded the Parliament buildings and 
flooded the districts along the river banks. Many lives were 
lost. The terrified survivors were taken from their homes in 
boats, or huddled for safety on roofs and in upper rooms. Hun- 
dreds of sea-going craft, from the boat of the coast-guard to the 
proud steamship, foundered, pounded upon the merciless rocks, 
or fell upon the equally cruel sand-bars. Thousands of lives 
were lost along the coasts, or upon the vexed and raging open 
sea. Solid stone quays and piers crumbled like loose wooden 
blocks before the resistless weight of billows, swollen with the 
swelling tide and lashed into fury by the following tornado. In 
France and England snow fell in greater quantities than was 
ever known before ; and starvation added terror to the deaths 
from cold and exposure. Railway trains were abandoned in 
drifts where only the funnel of the engine was visible. The 
malific influence was not confined to the surface of the ground, 
where exposure on the ocean or along the margin of the water 
tempted disaster ; one of the mines in Redruth, Cornwall, Eng- 
land, was suddenly and unaccountably flooded, and eight per- 
sons were drowned. Nor were these misfortunes scattered. 
They all happened on one day. 

What says the record? Still on the same day we were told 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 81 

that a great battle had been fought near Charillos, nine miles 
south of Lima in Peru ; hundreds were killed on both the Chil- 
ian and Peruvian sides. In South Africa, the English were 
killing the Basutos and marching against the Boers of the 
Transvaal. In Turkey, the Porte declined intervention in the 
Grecian dispute, and the Greeks were whetting their swords 
for war. In Berlin a proposed meeting of workingmen to pro- 
test against the anti- Jewish agitation was interdicted by the 
German government, and a riot was imminent. But how came 
such a meeting and such a protest possible? There can be 
nothing in the world more evident than that the adoption by 
the German government of an anti-Jewish policy is one link in 
the chain of bloodshed and oppression promised by the malific 
influences. It would have been impossible under any other 
conditions for Germany, educated, enlightened Germany, in 
this age of toleration, when a Jew has been Prime Minister of 
England : when Jews are the honored associates of the world's 
highest and best, to have been party to a Jewish persecution. 
Yet, in this age, under this reign of toleration, Germany not 
only permits, but actually inaugurates, a persecution of the 
Jews, as fine a race as ever lived on the face of the earth ; and 
so pursues the Jewish race, that even the German peasant and 
workman is moved to violent resentment and resistance. 

Is there anything more ? Read the record ! On that same 
day news were received from official sources to the effect that 
great military preparations are being made in Chinese Man- 
chooria, in the direction of the Siberian frontier ; and that 
means a conflict between the teeming hordes of China and the 
millions of the Sclavic races. Russia and the Tekke Turco- 
mans were in deadly embrace on the steppes of Tartary. The 
Afghanistan warriors were mustering to renewed attacks on the 
British intruders. The soldiers of Egypt were marching upon 
the confines of Abyssinia. Fretting France had given another 
sign of impending war with Germany, by the election of Gam- 
betta as President of the Chamber of Deputies by a decisive 
vote of 283 out of 376. And Gambetta is recognized as a Ger- 
man menace. Thus in the Eastern hemisphere the acuisse fer- 



-82 THE COMING CATASTKOPHE. 

ram gave token that the bloody consummation of malific con- 
junction was impending. 

In America, on the same day, fearful and wide-spread storms 
were experienced. Localities, hitherto strangers to extreme 
of cold and superabundance of snow, were inflicted with both 
these extremities. The storm signals flew from Frenchman's 
Bay in Maine, along the shores of Massachusetts, down Long 
Island, around Hatteras, to the southern point of Florida. 
Avalanches overwhelmed villages and scattered miners' cabins 
in the far western mountains. In Tennessee, a buried town 
was narrowly rescued from utter obliteration. Suicides, mur- 
ders, robberies, violence, were reported from city and country. 
A speck of war that will combine France and Great Britain 
against the United States was discerned, and its possible growth 
to a conflagration was indicated. Incendiary and accidental 
iires involved many dwellings and much property in destruc- 
tion. And yet, with all this patent and published, the blind, 
thoughtless, implicit reliers on equally blind guides, refused to 
see or acknowledge the inauguration of the era forecast by 
Grimmer, Duncan, Dr. Jonathan Cummings, Yivarez, Alman- 
sur, Tycho Brahe, Zahelbebis, and hundreds others, keen ob- 
servers. 

I do not claim for any one of these men any attribute of what 
is generally known as "divination" or "prophecy." And I have 
110 doubt that those of them still living would join in the pro- 
test of those already dead against any such imputation. They 
simply choose to see the text presented by nature, and to devote 
their intelligence to its comprehension and translation into hu- 
man speech. All of them agree upon the denouement of cer- 
tain ascertained and acknowledged causes. They arrive at 
their several conclusions from the same reasoning ; though in 
some cases entirely involuntarily. Dr. Cummings and Mr. 
Duncan both draw some inspiration from that earliest of Astro- 
logical books, — the Bible. Abraham was an Astrologer. Sol- 
omon and David have left their deductions from Judicial As- 
trology on record. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nahum, Hab- 
bakuk, all gained wisdom from the stars, or adopted the pre- 
cepts of predecessors, whose souls had waked to the music of 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 83 

the spheres. There can be no better fount of knowledge than 
such an one as that sought by Dr. Cummings and Mr. Duncan, 
in the absence of absolute personal conviction and study of Ju- 
dicial Astrology. That this is true is plentifully evidenced by 
the coincident judgments pronounced by men who arrive at an 
understanding of the writings of the former Astrologers, and 
those who investigate for themselves the same phenomena and 
read aright the precepts they indicate. Else why should Dr. 
Cummings follow the "Law and the Prophets" to the same 
goal as Professor Grimmer reaches under the guidance of the 
stars ? Dr. Cummings is an able and learned man ; one who 
has studied to great purpose, but is yet unable to divest himself 
of superstition, and give to natural law the reverence he owns 
to Providential. Yet this is part and parcel of the "signs of 
the times." Learned men are to be confounded ; to catch 
glimpses of the light, and yet to remain fettered in the bonds of 
mental serfdom and slavish regard for half-truths, drawn from 
the fount of nature, but perverted and befogged and turned to 
strange uses. 

Here then we have a consistent, unbroken and most convin- 
cing chain of demonstrable, tangible events, all pointing to the 
resolution of the problem of the future ; all evidencing the com- 
position of forces which must inevitably result in catastrophe. 
That is, the event will be terrible from your standpoint and 
mine. But in the vast swing of planets in their orbs, in the 
increasing roll of incalculable ages, in the mighty rule of eter- 
nal law, and the gradual cleansing of imperfection and attain- 
ment of perfection, there is nothing calamitous about the mat- 
ter. That vast swing, that unceasing roll, that mighty rule 
tend to one end — Rest. That is perfection, and it will be ob- 
tained. How? By the ultimate result of the ultimate conjunc- 
tions of all existing bodies. When? As far as you and I are 
concerned it will soon come. As for matter in the aggregate, 
and existences in the individual, the date is more remote, but 
none the less certain. 

Master minds saw this long ago, and handed down the 
knowledge they had gained. But, alas ! their lofty thoughts, 
their grand judgments, and their mysterious words lost force 



84 THE COMING CATASTROPHE, 

and intelligence in transmission, translation and retranslation* 
We all have laughed at some ridiculous misconception which 
has made even a solemn passage of Shakespeare ludicrous when 
done in German, French or Portuguese. This was within our 
limited literary and intellectual range. But by how far do the 
mistranslation and misconception of the old books of the Bible 
transcend the vagaries of foreign adapters of the English 
Shakespeare ? 

It is for this reason that I abstain altogether from Biblical 
reference, and appeal solely to reason and nature ; adapting the 
one to the reception of the teachings of the other. I could wish 
others so determined ; but as I have said, I do not ignore the 
value of the precepts to be drawn from the Bible, while I dep- 
recate it as a reference for every mortal event ; because only 
through the means which orthodoxy abhors, can orthodoxy's 
regulus be read. 

The predictions of profound Astrologers are on record. The 
realization of their presages is at hand. Will those who have 
denied the teacher still refuse to see in the beginning of the oc- 
currences he predicted the sure working out of the end, and by 
the indicated means? M. Bickerstaff. 



CHAPTER XI. 



A LOOK INTO THE PAST — WHAT THE GRECIAN HAS TO SAY. 



In view of the possibility of the recurrence of one of those 
periodic plagues, it may not be uninteresting to be permitted to 
peruse a minute description of one of those fearful scourges as 
it occurred over twenty-two centuries ago, by one who lived 
and labored before the Christian era. c. c. b. 



THE PLAGUE OF ATHENS.* 

TRANSLATED FROM LUCRETIUS BY REV. C. C. BEDELL, M. D. 

A plague like this, a tempest big with fate, 

Once ravaged Athens, and her sad domains ; 

Unpeopled all her city, and her paths 

Swept with destruction. For amid the realms 

Begot of Egypt, a mighty tract 

Of ether travers'd, many a flood o'erpass'd, 

* This plague occurred the first year of the Peloponesian war, or 431 B.C. It 
liad taken its rise, according to Thucydides, in that part of Ethiopia which bor- 
ders on Egypt, and, spreading from thence over Egypt and Lybia. at length in- 
vaded Athens. 



86 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

At length, here fixed it ; o'er the hapless realm 
Of Cecrops hovering, and the astonish' d race 
Dooming by thousands to disease and death. 

The head first flamed with inward heat ; the eyes 
Redden' d with fire suffused ; the purple jaws 
Sweated with bloody ichor ; ulcers foul 
Crept o'er the vocal path, obstructing close ; 
And the prompt tongue, expounder of the mind, 
O'erflowed with gore, enfeebled in its post, 
Hoarse in its accent, harsh beneath its touch. 
And when the morbid effluence through the throat 
Had reach'd the lungs, and fill'd the faltering heart, 

Then all the powers of life were loosen'd ; forth 

Crept the spent breath most fetid from the mouth, 

As streams the putrid carcass ; every power 

Fail'd through the soul — the body — and alike 

Lay liquescent at the gates of death, 

While with these dread, insufferable ills 

A restless anguish joined, companion close, 

And sighs commix'd with groans ; and hiccough deep r 

And keen, convulsive twitchings ceaseless urged, 

Day after day, o'er every tortur'd limb, 

The wearied wretch still wearying with assault. 

Yet ne'er too hot the system couldst thou mark 
Outwards, but rather tepid to the touch ; 
Tinged still with purple-dye, and brandished o'er 
With trails of caustic ulcers, like the blaze 
Of erysipelas. But all within 
Burn'd to the bone ; the bosom heaved with flames 
Fierce as a furnace, nor would once endure 
The lightest vest thrown loosely o'er the limbs. 
All to the winds, and many to the waves, 
Careless, resign'd them ; in the gelid stream 
Plunging their fiery bodies, to be cool'd ; 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 87 



While some, wide- gasping, into wells profound 
Rush'd all abrupt ; and such the red-hot thirst 
Unquenchable that parch'd them, amplest showers 
Seem'd but as dewdrops to the unsated tongue. 
Nor e'er relax'd the sickness ; the rack'd frame 
Lay all-exhausted, and, in silence dread, 
Appall'd and doubtful, mused the Healing Art. 
For the broad eyeballs, burning with disease, 
Roll'd in full stare, forever void of sleep, 
And told the pressing danger ; nor alone 
Told it, for many a kindred symptom throng'd. 

The mind's pure spirit, all-despondent raved ; 
The brow severe, the visage fierce and wild ; 
The ears distracted, fill'd with ceaseless sounds ; 
Frequent the breath, or ponderous, oft, and rare ; 
The neck with pearls beaew'd of glistening sweat ; 
Scanty the spittle, thin, of saffron dye, 
Salt, with hoarse cough scarce labor' d from the throat. 
The limbs each trembled ; every tendon twitched, 
Spread o'er the hands ; and from the foot extreme 
O'er all the frame a gradual coldness crept. 

Then, towards the last, the nostrils close collapsed ; 
The nose acute ; eyes hollow ; temple scoop'd ; 
Frigid the skin, retracted ; o'er the mouth 
A ghastly grin ; the shrivel'd forehead tense ; 
The limbs outstretch'd, for instant death prepar'd ; 
'Till, within the eighth descending sun, for few 
Reach' d his ninth lustre, life forever ceas'd. 
And though at times, the infected death escap'd 
From sanious organs, or the lapse profuse 
Of black-tinged feces, fate pursued them still. 

Hectic and void of strength consumption pale 
Prey'd on their vitals ; or with headache keen, 
Oft from the nostrils tides of blood corrupt 



88 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

Pour'd unrestrain'd, and wasted them to shades, 
And e'en o'er these triumphant, frequent still 
Fix'd the morbific matter on the limbs, 
Or seiz'd the genital organs ; and to some 
The grave so hideous, they consented life, 
E'en with the excision of their sexual powers, 
Dearly to ransom ; some their being bought 
By loss of feet or hands ; and some escap'd 
Void of all vision ; such their dread of death. 

And in oblivion some so deep were drown' d 
Themselves they knew not, nor their lives elaps'd. 
And though unburied, corse o'er corse the streets 
Oft throng'd promiscuous, still the plumy tribes, 
The forest-monsters, either far aloof 
Kept, the foul stench repulsing, or, if once 
Dared they the plunder, instant fate pursued. 
Nor feathery flocks at noon, nor beasts at night 
Their native woods deserted ; with the pest 
Remote they languished, and full frequent died ; 
But chief the dog his generous strength resign'd, 
Tainting the highways, while the ruthless bane 
Through every limb his sickening spirit drove. 

With eager strife the enormous grave was snatch'd, 

By friends intended ; nor was aught of cure 

Discern'd specific ; for, what here recall'd 

Today's bright regions the vanescent soul, 

Prov'd poison there, and tenfold stamped their fate. 

But this the direst horror that when once 

Man felt the infection, as though full forewarn' d 

Of sure destruction, melancholy deep 

Prey'd o'er his heart, his total courage fail'd, 

Death sole he looked for, and his doom was death. 

Thus seiz'd the dread, unmitigated pest 
Man after man, and day succeeded day, 
With taint voracious ; like the herds they fell 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 89 

Of bellowing beeves, or flocks of timorous sheep ; 

On funeral, funeral hence forever piled, 

E'en he, who fled the afflicted, urged by love 

Of life too fond, and trembling for his fate, 

Eepented soon severely, and himself 

Sunk in his guilty solitude, devoid 

Of friends, of succor, hopeless and forlorn. 

While those who nurs'd them, to the pious task 

Rous'd by their prayers, with piteous moans commixt, 

Fell irretrievable, the best by far, 

The worthiest, thus most frequent met their doom. 

From ceaseless sepultures, where each with each 

Vied in the duteous labor, they return' d 

Faint, sad and weeping ; and from grief alone 

Oft to their beds resistless were they driven. 

Nor liv'd the mortal then, who ne'er was tried 

With death, with sickness, or severest woe. 

The herdsman, shepherd and the man 
Of sturdiest strength, w^ho drove the plough afield, 
Languish'd remote ; and in their wretched cots 
Sunk, the sad victims of disease and want ; 
O'er breathless sires their breathless offspring lay, 
Or sires and mothers o'er the race they bore. 
Nor small the misery through the city oft 
That pour'cl from distant hamlets ; for in throngs 
Full flock'd the sickening peasants for relief 
From every point diseased : and every space, 
And every building crowded ; heightening here 
The rays of death, the hillocks of the dead. 

Some, parch'd with thirst, beneath the eternal spout 
Dropp'd of the public conduits ; in the stream 
Wallowing unwearied, and its dulcet draught 
Deep drinking 'till they bursted. Staggering, some 
Threw o'er the highways, and the streets they trod, 
Their languid limbs, already half-extinct, 



90 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

Horrid with fetor, stiff with blotches foul, 
With rags obscene scarce cover'd ; o'er the bones 
Skin only, naught but skin ; and drown' d alike 
Within and outwards, with putrescent germs. 
At length the temples of the gods themselves 
Changed into charnels, and their sacred shrines 
Throng'd with the dead ; for superstition now, 
And power of altars, half their sway had lost, 
Whelm'd in the pressure of the present woe. 

Nor longer now the costly rites prevail' d 
Of ancient burial, erst punctilious kept ; 
For all rov'd restless, with distracted mind, 
From scene to scene : and, worn with grief and toil, 
Gave to their friends the interment chance allow'd. 
And direst exigence impell'd them oft, 
Headlong, to deeds most impious ; for the pyres 
Funeral seiz'd they, rear'd not by themselves, 
And with loud dirge, and wailing wild, o'er these 
Plac'd their own dead ; amid the unhallowed blaze 
With blood contending, rather than resign 
The tomb thus gain'd or quit the enkindling corse. 



THE PERIHELIA OF THE PLANETS. 



In 542 A. D., Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were in perihelia. 
This was the fifteenth year of Justinian's reign. Gibbon, the 
historian, having no knowledge, it seems, of the perihelia of 
the planets, says : 

"Such was the universal corruption of the air, that the pesti- 
lence which burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian was 
not checked or alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In 
time, its first malignity was abated and dispersed ; the disease 
alternately languished and revived ; but it was not until the 
end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years, that mankind re- 
covered their health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious 
quality. No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, 
or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in the ex- 
traordinary mortality. I only find, that during three months, 
five, and at length ten thousand persons died each day at Con- 
stantinople ; that many cities of the East were left vacant, and 
that in several districts of Italy the harvest and the vintage 
withered on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence 
and famine afflicted the subjects of Justinian ; and his reign is 



92 THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 

disgraced by a visible decrease of the human species, which 
has never been repaired, in some of the fairest countries of the 
globe." 

We will now give a few extracts from Professor Knapp. He 
says : 

"The relative position of the four large superior planets in 
the proximate future will be as follows : The next perihelion 
passage of the planet Jupiter, will occur in 1880 ; there will be 
a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1881 ; the commensu- 
rate perihelia of Uranus and Neptune will occur in 1882, and 
the perihelion passage of Saturn will occur in 1885. Busy 
times in physics — lively times for doctors and undertakers also 
— niay therefore soon be looked for by those who believe in the 
certainties of astronomy. 

4 c The passages of the four planets will be so remarkable in 
the coming period that I will notice them more in detail. 

" Jupiter will make his perihelion passage in September, 
1880 ; Uranus his in August, 1882 ; Neptune his in December 
of the same year ; and Saturn his in September, 1885 — all 
within a period of less than Jive years, by a few days. 

"So close an approximation to the synchronous perihelia of 
the four planets has not occurred since the Christian era. The 
nearest approach to it was the period of 1708 to 1718, (Nep- 
tune's latest period of revolution,) when they all made their 
perihelia within less than ten years of a synchronous adjust- 
ment. And this period, carried through to 1738, (the com- 
mensurate period of Jupiter and Saturn,) was the most mortal 
period of the eighteenth century, the period in which Lord 
Anson nourished as a circumnavigator, and his ship's crew 
nearly all perished with scurvy, long before the introduction of 
lemon-juice into the naval service. 

"Whether the nearer approach to a synchronous adjustment 
of the perihelia of these four heavy planets, that is to occur in 
the approximate future, will throw a heaver pall over the earth 
than the rather more remote adjustment of the past period 
spoken of, is a matter that time only can reveal. The plane- 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 93 

tary forces will be brought nearer to a focus, but the world is 
in an advanced condition. 

"Agriculture, horticulture, commerce, the arts and sciences, 
medical skill and remedies, all the protecting comforts of life 
and health, are a thousand fold advanced ; the world ought to 
stand it better ; and the most advanced and enlightened nations 
will ride out any great, forcible, and long continued pestilential 
period, better than they did a century and a half ago." 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE TO THE PUBLIC. 



ANNUS MIRABILIS. 



Both the religious and secular press are teeming with arti- 
cles that relate to the great happenings which are pre- 
dicted between the dates of 1881 and 1887. Few, if any, care 
to say that the period we have just entered is not one of more 
than mere passing significance. The general tenor of all that 
is said goes to show that investigators believe something un- 
common is going to happen. That we should be unduly 
alarmed, or go crazy over what may happen, is the most utter 
folly and nonsense. The great point with all mankind should 
be to be prepared constantly for what may come to pass. If 
we are prepared for any change that a kind Providence may 
provide for mankind — always ready— then certainly all fear 
will be cast out, and we can say, come tempest, pestilence and 
-carnage ; or even though the earth melt or be blown to atoms, 



THE COMING CATASTROPHE. 95 

still we will trust the Great Upholder of all things, for "He 
doeth all things well." 

This little volume has been prepared because it has been de- 
manded all over the country. Since the first publication of 
Professor Grimmer' s prediction in our columns, we have been 
besieged with letters from all parts of the United States asking 
us to publish a pamphlet containing his article, with any other 
information on the subject we might possess. We concluded 
to republish it in the Tribune, thinking that would satisfy the 
demand, but an extra 1500 copies, added to our regular edition, 
seemed to be only a drop in the bucket, the demand was so 
great. After mature deliberation we finally deemed it best to 
bring everything in our possession relating to the subject of 
the predicted coming catastrophe to the world and its inhabit- 
ants, in neat and convenient book form. 

The information we present comes from such sources as to 
cause every reader to stop, consider and reflect. Mankind are 
ever anxious to know what others think, and if possible to step 
forth into the beyond and see what is to come. When men of 
science speak it is well to stop and listen, for perchance they 
may aid us in grasping at the truth which lies entirely in the 
opposite direction. If mankind desire to peer into u the what 
is to be," it is certainly a curiosity which cannot often be grati- 
fied with any positive assurance of helpfulness in our mission 
on earth. Second sight is rarely given to the children of men, 
and star prophets are not sure that what they say will prove 
true. As a rule it is better to trouble little about what is to 
come, so far as to lead us to consult some seer, or one gifted 
with a pretended skill of peering into the misty future. 

In this volume the opinions of such eminent Biblical and sci- 
entific scholars and writers as Rev. Dr. Seiss, Dr. Cummings 



96 THE COMING CATASTROPHE, 

and Professor Grimmer are given, together with other authori- 
ties of no mean and insignificant standing. Let no one say 
these gentlemen shall not be heard when they represent emi- 
nent respectability and learning. If they err, time will tell ; 
let us, therefore, one and all, await the passing of time with 
due patience and Christian resignation. Magna est Veritas , et 
prcevalebit. 




Wy'21 



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